The Warehouse
by tHEaNNOYINGcATT
Summary: Cages, rows of cages. Each barley big enough to house a small dog let alone a human being. Blood and excrement pooled around them in puddles that fed the vermin who infested this place. When this was paired with the dim light it made the floor look alive. He was familiar with this death trap as it's been his home for almost half his life, because Izuku Midoriya was a survivor.
1. And then she cried

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**Chapter One: And then she cried**

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Izuku Midoriya sighed. It was one of those days. He sat in his cage tapping his fingers against the metal floor of his isle. He had been moved here recently after his most recent bout in the arena, which had been largely uneventful, and because of that he was full of energy. He was forced to just sit there and wait for someone to collect him for 'his turn' to come around again... bullshit.

The quirk suppression collar sat snugly around his neck and he felt the small buzz of the machine keeping his power under control. Yet of course the small devise meant nothing to him, he could easily reach to his neck and rip the stupid thing straight from his neck and crush it into a fine paste; but he didn't. He's tried it before, and it had come around as a pointless waste of energy that had resulted with the prosthetic that was in the place of his right hand, and to be honest, having a hand made of -what may as well be- junk was kind of uncomfortable.

He had almost lost the first time fighting with it in the arena, which would be the first time he came close to failure, and that had made him hate the piece of junk more than he already did. Speaking of the arena, he was overdue, some of the guards were ought to bring him there soon. It was a little boring sitting still for hours on end, but he didn't really care that much. Well he did. But he still knows that he would go to the arena and go onto an assignment anyway, so why not try and enjoy the long stretches of nothingness between them no matter how pointless they may be.

Actually he hasn't received food in a while, and he had started to feel a little bit queasy. Actually, never mind, they would probably give him food just before he goes into the arena... a last meal of sorts. That brought a smile to his face, him die in the arena, that would be hilarious.

Yet he may have to go to the Doctors beforehand to have a check up on the piece of garbage which is his hand, he wasn't looking forward to that, yet he wasn't going to need anything more than a check and a few shots so he shouldn't worry that much. They would most likely just patch up the wounds he earns in the arena after the fact anyway. Yet that may be true, he does have bad memories of the doctors, so he will always be on guard just in case they decide that he looks like he needs a 'fixing' or something... it's happened before.

Anyway, he wasn't board, yet he wasn't entertained, it was a blissful trance for Izuku. It was one of his favourite things to do because how close to sleep it feels. Maybe that is a tactic of theirs, to keep him sleep deprived so he can't concentrate on anything else but how tired he was... or maybe they get some sought of sick pleasure from seeing him awake twenty-four seven. Either way, the jokes on them, he had learnt to sleep with his eyes open years ago so they wouldn't know if he was sleeping or not... okay maybe he didn't win with how dry his eyes are when he wakes up, so what?

The silence was starting to get to him again, even if the trance it causes is nice the fact that he start to hear things that are not their worries him. he reaches his hand over to his neck and starts to scratch. It was nervous tick that he had developed over the years spent in this place and had made scars run up and down his neck. To be honest, it had started to hurt a while ago, but it was one of the rare comforts he had developed in this place and he wasn't about to throw it away for something as pointless as health. His health was jeopardised by him existing, so a few pointless scars wouldn't affect him in any considerable manner.

The silence started to make his ears ring and he looked around the nearby cages to check for anything that could distract him from the insufferable noise in his head, this was one of the things he dislikes the most... silence. Sure he might like the nothingness between his assignments and the next fight in the arena, but the silence just got to him. The same sight greets his eyes as the last time he checked over the nearby cages, one Nomu, six corpses and one empty cage right next to him.

The cage used to belong to the kind looking boy, he talked to him once or twice but most the time they just sat in silence. He is happy they had evicted him from the cage after he went quiet for good. Living next to a corpse is rather unsanitary and the stench made him want to puke.

The bloody prosthetic started to itch again, he wanted to rip the cursed thing right off of his body. Yet if he did that it would show he had used his quirk and he didn't want to start a lock down... those were annoying. Pain sprang up through his wrist as a flake of metal from the awful thing dug into his flesh, he glared back down at the piece of garbage and considered smashing it into the floor until it broke. He would do literally anything to get the thing off of him, even sell his soul to Satan, yet that would be a major rip off... his soul had died a miserable death years ago.

He tapped his finger against the floor, the dull thud was the only way to quench the silence, yet he knew it wasn't enough "No let go of me," The gathering silence shattered in an instant, he looked in the direction of the weak cry. He turned his head to look in the direction of the noise, what he saw was classic scene for this place. Two guards were dragging a girl down the isle as she weakly struggled. She looked rather plain, medium height, healthy looking yet not fit, silky brown hair that reached down to her shoulder blades and brown blood shot eyes. Her voice sounded shrill, as if she had been crying, she probably has been due to her situation, "P-please," her voice was even weaker than before.

The guards dragged her all the way to the cage to his right and stuffed her in, all the while a soft and steady stream of tears worked their way down her face. The guard bent down and double checked the quirk suppression collar was secure around her neck before locking the cage and swiftly leaving. The girl was huddled in a ball in the cage to his right, soft sobs came from her as she cried into her arms. After a few minutes of this the sobs slowly came to a halt, and the girl sniffed before attempting to blow her nose into the standard gown.

She looked around, observing her surroundings. Her eyes drifted over the nearby cages and the slumped figure's inside, her face grew more and more shocked as she saw the blood stains on the floor and the urine puddles around the cages. Yet the sight she saw next made everything else look like sunshine and rainbows, she spotted a Nomu.

Those things had made him want to vomit the first time he saw them, and he was sure the girl was in the same boat as his younger self. Most Nomus kept here are incomplete making them an unstable mess of muscle and quirks that would be to dangerous to hold in main storage. The girl didn't take it well, she swung to the right and vomited onto the floor, this Nomu was on the tamer side -many of the damned things had missing limbs- with the only disturbing things being the exposed brain and the bulging eyes... perhaps the ripped skin could be considered disturbing.

The girl spluttered and coughed, she placed a hand over her mouth and the rasping noise slowly became quieter until and a tense silence took its place. She carried on her assessment of her surroundings, purposefully avoiding the Nomu, sweeping over the cages and the puddles of blood and urine. Her gaze finally fell onto him, her eyes widened hope filling every dark crevasse. Then it was gone, replaced with cold horror. He knew he was a sight to behold, all long-term residence were, but he didn't think it would elicit that kind of reaction.

He felt his eyes narrow at the newcomer. He wasn't looking forward to the next few days, being stuck next to a cry-baby was less than ideal. "H-help me, p-please," her voice was wobbly, and her lips were trembling, maybe if he complied, she would shut up, he may not like the silence, but he preferred it to her constant sobs. "W-whats going on? I-I want to go h-home," he wanted to scoff, she wanted to go home did she, too bad for her then, she's going to be here for a reaaal long time. Actually, to be honest, she wouldn't, she wouldn't even survive five seconds in the arena never mind the evaluation newcomers go through.

He cringed at the memory.

"Why should I help you," a look of pure dread passed over her face, that was the wrong thing to say, he should have been more polite or something. Or maybe not, if he broke apart her psyche to the point that she was catatonic then she would definitely be quiet. "You wouldn't survive one second in the arena, nevermind an assignment so why should I waste my time on dead meat," She looked back him, a mixture of anger and dread liquefied and fell down her cheeks as tears. He made sure he matched the hateful glare with pure apathy.

She had no clue about this place and she had to learn quickly or she would die for sure, which would actually be a big plus, but if she did survive, she would need as much knowledge as she could get... he was going on a tangent and he need to stop debating everything like this was a hard decision, it was quite simple compared to how he's been presenting it to himself, its either he helps her, or he doesn't.

There were pros and cons to each, and to be honest the choice was not really that much of a mind boggler. If it came down to pure rationality, he should just let her die, but there was a voice in his head that was ebbing away his confidence in his decision.

But it came down to this, which did he value more, his non-existent moral compass or peace and quiet.

He grimaced to himself, he may be occupying this hell hole but that hadn't taken all of his humanity yet goddamn it, he's a murder not a psychopath. And if she manages to survive than she would grow to value the quite as much as him, so he should help her... how does he do that. He can't really hold her hand as he gives her a tour around, but he could still give her pointers. Like a tutorial... what was a tutorial, he's heard a few of the guards talk about in passing but he's never seen one... he was going off on a tangent again.

"What do y-you want from me," She growled out from between her teeth, venom dripped from each stuttered word. She was directing all her confusion, despair and rage towards him to make a pungent concoction of hate... it was adorable. He raised a brow as he lazily sized her up, she could do absolutely nothing to him, unless her quirk happens to be able to instantly kill people, any and all threat could be took in stride.

Well if his assessment is correct then he doesn't really have to worry how blunt he is, he just needs to build trust by being honest "for you to be quiet," shock spread across her face like a tidal wave. That was the wrong move.

"W-whats the matter with you," That shock went to anger in an instant as she spat out her retort. Actually, if he thought about it, he might have a large variety of things the matter with him; luckily for him... he wasn't going to think about it. But, nevertheless, he would have to be less blunt with her, she was obviously weak at heart, so if he wanted to help her, then he would need to give the information slowly as not to overwhelm her... he also shouldn't tell her to shut up like he just did. "Many things," he said, brushing off the insult, he needed to change the subject and fast... damn he's bad at this.

The girls gaze was full of loathing, well this wasn't going well, how was he going to get the peace from peace and quiet if she is always glaring at him in his peripheral vision. He wasn't off to a good start, but in his defence, he had only just determining his method of shutting her up. But he still needed a plan to gain her trust, so that she would believe everything about this place. He could just try and pretend the last five minutes didn't happen. "But let me ask you, what do you want from me?" Her gaze softened as confusion came back onto her face.

"I-I uh..." she was racking her brain to answer him, which made sense, he was her 'best chance to escape' in her eyes. He had to stop a smirk reaching his face, it was funny how quickly her attitude had changed, but considering her situation he couldn't really blame her. Her gaze returned to him, a look of determination on her face and fire in her eyes "I want you to help me go back home," he felt one of his eyebrow quirk up as he scrutinised her every move, he felt another smirk come to his lips, it surprised -and impressed- him that she was so determined after all the things she has seen.

"Well I can't help you there," when saying that he tried to make himself sound reassuring and kind, but from the way she glared at him, he thinks he failed at that. "But i can help you in other ways," it was her turn to look suspicious, her brow raised, and her eyes narrowed. It made sense why she would doubt him, not twenty seconds ago he had out right told her she was a useless piece of trash. But he should stop thinking and start speaking.

She beat him to it, "What other ways," he was surprised at how simple the question was, he wasn't sure what he was expecting but this was really simple to answer that it was laughable. He reached his prosthetic to his neck and scratched it, leaving trails of blood along his cracked skin "well I could give you forewarning about this place," it was a short answer but it was all he needed to say to clutch onto her attention... even if it was in a bad way. She looked at him sceptically, trying to see if he was bluffing... which was dumb, what would he have to gain from lying to her.

"W-why would I need 'f-forewarning' if I'm going to escape," it sounded more like she was trying to convince herself more than him, he felt his eye brow raise, it was cute she thinks she can escape, like a disobedient lamb being led to slaughter. "do you think if I could escape I would," the question took the girl by surprise, she looked at him wide eyed for a couple of seconds, before opening her mouth to answer only for him to cut her off "for your information the answer is yes, so if that is the case, why am I still here," she carried to look at him with that same stupid face as if the fate of the universe was reviled to her.

"B-But I'm different, I-I n-need to go home," her voice grew hoarse and panicked, so much so she may not even have realised she had said that aloud, her eyes flew away from him once again looking for a way to escape. She was frantic and after spotting nothing from her position on the floor she started to claw at the rim of the cage. He could see her nails splinter and bleed as she started to hyperventilate, he sighed internally; he wasn't sure which was worse, the crying or this. He instantly swatted the thought away; it didn't matter because if he helped her, she would soon understand the value of peace and quiet.

But at the moment he was going to make sure she survived through the arena, even if he didn't need to, he reached his hand through the bar of his cage and placed it on her shoulder. The metal of his hand made her instantly snap her neck towards him and -once again- he tried his best to smile comfortingly and -once again- it failed miserably. Her face scrunched up and tears rolled down her cheeks, a wail burst through her lips as she curled up even further into herself.

He tried his best to find a shred of sympathy for the girl. Having failed that he closed his eyes and focused on the darkness in front of him, he would have much preferred the route of railing into her until she went catatonic and have her die in the evaluation.

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If you ask Katsuki Bakugo if he is going to be the best hero in the world, he would respond with a firm 'Yes' before he goes into a long rant about how strong he is and how weak everyone else is in comparison, he has the best grades in every class he has and has the street smarts too survive a battle situation. He would go on to tell you how he could doge any normal attack and also happens to have the best quirk in his generation called 'Explosion,' which produced a nitro-glycerine like substance on his palms -that replaced his sweat- which he could ignite at will.

But if you look deeper you would find a slightly self-conscious and decent person who is aware how weak he is and dumb he is in comparison to everyone else; he isn't as arrogant as he acts. He knows that there are people that could totally crush him in a fight without even trying, he knows that there a plenty of people that have enough training to hit him even if he dodges and plenty of people who are and always will be smarter than him no matter how high he might force his grades.

But the biggest thing he is self-conscious about, is one singular moment. It was when he was having a sleep over at his best friend's home, who was named 'Izuku Midoriya', when they were seven. They had been watching videos of All Might and laughing all night before they went to sleep not knowing that the next day would be the turning point in both of their lives.

The next morning, when he woke up, Izuku was not in his bed, he had assumed he had woken up early. He had walked to Inko's room and knocked on her door, she came out and gave him a tired smile (he does wake up at 5:43 in the morning). He then asked where Izuku was because he had not seen him anywhere in the house and she paled. She ran around the apartment calling his name.

Once she could not find him, she called the police. They came in a few minutes later and brought them both in for questioning, he told them that they had a nice night and when he woke up Deku was gone. The police then investigated and only found one broken window and no glass to be found on the floor in Izuku's room and it was assumed that it was broken from the inside.

The investigated was stopped after a few hours after to 'Lack of evidence'. He had never really gotten over the fact that he did nothing as Izuku was ripped from his and Inko's lives after only three hours of investigations, the media didn't even make a big deal over it like they normally do over missing children, all because he was quirkless. Yet he had distance himself from the hate he felt for the bigotry that society looked over when he was at school, he still had to keep his grades up. Even if he got full marks on the practical test U.A wasn't going to allow someone with bellow average grades into general studies never mind the hero course.

And either way he had his midnight excursions to deal with all his pent up anger at everything.

Today was a classic school day, go to school, go to homeroom, gloat about becoming number one, stop his 'friends' from bullying some extra, go to class, suffer through the rest of the day, go home to his apartment. At the moment he is walking home with his 'friends' they talked and joked until they got to Bakugo's apartment block they then left, and he walked into his residence. He threw his shoes off and ran to his room and did all his homework he then threw it all into his bag he then began the most important part of the day.

He stood up from his desk and over to his tack board. It had Izuku's face in the middle and red sting spider webbing out from there, each end of the sting touched possible evidence; some locks of green heir he found in an ally; a security camera with footage of him walking by and stuff like that. Just a lot of vague hints and false leads that lead him to nothing of use... sometimes shreds of blood covered rags. Sometimes clips of Izuku with Inko when he was still a seven-year-old child. With the little evidence he had come up with two idea of what might have happened to Izuku has come into mind.

One, he ran away.

Or two, someone had kidnapped him.

The overall lack of evidence makes it almost impossible to find the damn nerd, even if he stayed up past six o'clock just searching for him. But the fact of the matter is, in each situation it was not impossible to find him. To be honest it would be more ideal for it to be option two, but he really hoped it to be one because he didn't really like the idea of Izuku be under the control of some psycho who kidnaps seven year old's for the fun of it. If it was option number one then a whole slew of problems would arise, for one it meant that Izuku didn't want to come back which would mean that the smart ass would cover his trail and as there was only Izuku to find, not a group of kidnappers, it would be a lot easier for him to do that.

But option number two meant that there would be more people to track therefore making it easier to find, yet he did not know who would kidnap Izuku. If it was some child rapist then he would most likely already be dead and in a ditch somewhere. But if it was a vast organisation, then they wouldn't kidnap him just to kill later, it would be a waste of resources and manpower.

But one fact remains even if it's one or two, Izuku would be coming back to him and Inko.

knock knock*

Katsuki quickly span towards his closed door. The fact someone knocked on his door worried him, he already knew who was behind his door, that wasn't what worried him, it was his mother. That's what was concerning, he not worried about who's behind his door, it was why. There had only been two times when she had knocked before, the first time had been to tell him that he would be moving to the new apartment so that they could be there for Inko more. The second time had been when Inko had her first suicide attempt in her apartments bathroom.

So the fact that he had them at his door was nerve racking, he surreptitiously made his way to the door and slowly opened it just a crack to look who was behind it and he saw his mother standing in the doorway, a passive expression plastered on her face... a bad sign right off the bat. She had both he hands in front of her, wringing nervously. Bakugo really was getting nervous now, his mother had never winged her hands before. His father was the one that tended to have nervous twitches, his mother tended to swear viciously when she's stressed. He fully opened the door and looked up to her.

She in turn, looked down to look at him. They both awkwardly stood there for a few seconds waiting for the other to start the conversation. Eventually his mother had had enough of the silence and started the conversation "So how has your day been," his concern instantly doubled. Normally they both stay out of each other's lives and even those rare cases when they do get involved, casual swearing was always thrown around instead of any mother son formalities. He thought on his answer for a few seconds before responding with the tamest answer he could.

"It was fine... my grades are pretty high, so i think I'm doing alright all things considered," he made sure to keep his behaviour and the two idiots that followed him around out of the conversation. He really didn't want his mother to get on his case because he had already started to develop a headache and if she got involved it would evolve into a migraine and the one thing, he hated most were migraines. They both stood there in another awkward silence, he was starting to get irritated. He could be looking for Izuku right now and he really did not have the time to be standing still doing literally nothing.

"So... I have a few things I have to be doing around about now so... I'll be in my room if you need me," he turned from his mother and attempted to quickly tuck himself back into his room, he felt a tug at his sleeve and saw his mother had grabbed onto him to stop him advancing back into his room. She pulled against him dragging him back into the hallway, this time she was glaring at him which Katsuki was a lot more comfortable with. His mother started talking this time with all the previous concern flung out the metaphorical window.

"Do not even try to pull that one on me, you may be able to pull it off on your farther but not me," she was clearly getting to the limit of her maturity. He really didn't have time for this, yet the linger fear of what news she brought was still lurking in the back of his mind.

His mother's facial expression had changed from the doubtful and concerned mother back into its normal rabid state. His mother held onto his arm for a few more seconds before warily letting it go and settled back into a slightly more aggravated state.

"I came here to have a conversation, with you," a dozen snarky remarks entered his mind at her statement, all of which he instantly shot out of the sky. His nerves were growing by the second as he tried to predict what his mother was going to say. Maybe it was a good thing, like how he forgot it was his birthday that one time and she had to physically drag him out of his room to celebrate. But his mother didn't knock that time, that was what was throwing him through a loop. Every time she wanted him, she smashed to door down, yet she didn't and that scared him beyond belief. "I'm gonna come right out and say it...,"

Conflict spread across her face, like she was contemplating how to help a wounded animal "me and your farther are worried about you," that wasn't what he was expecting, what did they have to worry about. He was perfectly healthy; his grades were strait one-hundreds and A plus'. He always handed homework in on time and even if the teachers hated him, they wouldn't dream of complaining about their 'star student'. "And don't even try to shrug this off, we are legitimately concerned for you and we will not let you try and ignore it," This threw Katsuki through another larger hoop. What did she mean, why was she concerned, he was doing fine.

"... what do you mean by that," this inquiry got a stern look from his mother that sent a chill down his spine, she blinked a few times before cradling the bridge of her nose with finger in a useless attempt to stop her from physically attacking her child for his blatant stupidity. "What the hell do you think you idiot. You spend every spare second in your room theorizing on were the fuck Izuku is," He winced at his mother's bluntness, yet the confusion still lingered at the back of his mind. What else would be doing in his room all day, he needed to find him no matter the cost.

"Well I hate to break it to you, but he's dead. The cops say he was probably dumped off in a ditch somewhere. That's it. Nothing else, even his damn mother has decided to move on so should you for fuck sake," Mitsuki was to concentrated on yelling at her son to actually realize the full implications of what she just said until it was too late, when she finally got a good look at her son guilt washed over her. Tears burnt their way down his face as he stood their taking in each word that his mother spat. He pushed past her and made for the front door.

"Wait Katsuki that's not what I me-," Her words were cut short when he slammed the door of the apartment behind him. Katsuki sprinted down the stairs in a mad panic, sure his mothers words stung, but he couldn't really give a flying fuck of what she thought... well he did… and thinking that's what his mother thought stung like shit but he had more important things to do. No, what he was worrying about were the implications of the last few words she had said. What did she mean by 'Even his damn mother decide to move on,' the last time Inko had even tried to go into Izuku's room she had broken down into a mess of tears, so how could that be considered 'moving on'.

And not to mention what she must be going through, Izuku was the most important aspect of her life and she had it ripped it away from her all at once. To be honest he didn't think of Inko most of the time because he was too busy try to find Izuku but that hadn't stopped him from seeing her every once in a while, a bump in at the mall here and a delivery to her house there. Well delivery was the wrong word to use, more like grocery run, ever since the _incident _Inko had refused to leave her house unless it was absolutely life threatening. And according to her, running out of food didn't class as life threatening...

Actually the more he thought about, the more he's glad that his family had moved closer to her. If they hadn't, he's not that sure she would have made it this far. He should actually pay closer attention to Inko or he could do more for her, like doing the grocery run... yeah that should be fine. Before more thoughts could bombard his head, he was at the bottom of his apartment complex, he ran to the road and dashed across, he passively heard the screeching of tires and burning of rubber followed the shout of an angry driver. Yet he didn't care, why should he.

After his dangerous yet short trek across the road he ran for Inko's complex and through the door into the building. He ran past the reception area and to the stair well, were he slammed the door open so hard it almost sprang straight off its hinges. He carried on up the stairs smoking at the palms in a futile attempt to calm himself down. His legs slowed as he reached Inko's floor and he actually thought on what he would have to say as a believable excuse to check in on her. He could just tell her the truth and try and salvage some evidence discreetly from Izuku's room without her noticing.

He walked from the stare well and into the hallway where he walked over to Inko's door. He briefly considered his plan of attack before raising his hand to knock on the door. Yet just before he was about to bring his fist down onto the piece of wood he heard a crash on the other side of the door to which he swung the door open, to his surprise was open, the scene that greeted him was depressing, Inko was collapsed before the bedroom that used to belong to Izuku. Around her there were several types of cleaning appliances, a duster and even a new pane of glass for the broken window.

Muffled sobs rose from Inko's crumpled form, her head held in her hands. He made his way slowly to Inko and placed a comforting hand on her back, he helped her to her feet and led her over to the couch in the small living room. He then switched onto the news, it was talking about how some top-ranking hero from America that was being dragged back home by her suing wife, honestly, he couldn't care less about that bullshit nonsense. He looked over to Inko who was still crying uncontrollably, he quietly made his way over to the kitchen. He quickly checked the fridge and bread cabinets and found absolutely nothing of interest. He check the bottom cabinets and found a few packs of instant ramen that he brought over to the counter top.

He then quickly got out some green tea packets, he set the kettle on and opened the two ramen containers before placing the flavouring onto the noodles. He got out some teacups and a tea pot which he swiftly wiped the however many years old dust off the surface. Soon after that he collected a tray and placed the cups onto it. He then heard the kettle go off, he grabbed the now boiling water and poured some into each cup then into the ramen before waiting for both the tea and the ramen to finish.

He placed the ramen onto the tray and brought it through into the lounge, he noticed that Inko had stopped sobbing into her hands and had focused in on the TV. She looked even more exhausted than the last time he had seen her, the bags under her eyes were bold compered to her pale complexion. She sat on the couch slumped silent tears made their way down her face which she furiously scrubbed away.

He walked carefully towards the coach he had led Inko to only a few minutes ago before placing the tray down onto the coffee table in front of her. She snapped her head upwards to look at him, surprise written on her face, she then suddenly dropped her head down to look at the floor, "I'm sorry you had to see me like that," she said. He took a look at Inko and realizing a few things. A few things that concerned him.

For one, Inko was considerably skinnier than the last time he had seen her, he had expected this because every time he had seen her, she had got progressively thinner. Her once emerald hair grew dull and gained streaks of white from grief, it was tied into a messy bun that was held in place with a messily placed bobble. He hadn't really noticed when he saw her earlier, but she had also shrank a couple of inches. All in all, she needed help. He already knew that, but this was more so proof. He really needed to visit more often.

He picked up his packet of ramen and cup of tea before walking to the chair next to the couch, he sat down slowly and tried to zero in on the TV which was rather hard with the growing sense of guilt and dread, he carried on glancing towards Inko every once in a while to make sure she hadn't vanished into thin air. He glanced back at the Television which was on one of the many hero-based news stations'. Sure it may do other thing like the weather, but people manly tuned in just to get the latest Hero drama.

_"and now for our next headline: a villain was defeated in downtown earlier today by the nooby hero known as Kamui-woods who is currently a side kick under the number seven hero, Edgeshot. He had been praised by the number seven hero and has had a long history of defeating gigantification villains such as the one he had taken down today. He had made the statement that he has been planning to make his own agency for a while now and with this new surge in popularity, I am sure that he has the public's support to pull it off. Now to John Davids, with the weather.,"_

Katsuki looked back to Inko who was reluctantly using the plastic fork to eat the instant ramen. He picked up his to start eating the instant ramen on his lap... it tasted like shit. There was no other way of describing this garbage, he wanted to spit it straight out of his mouth. He grabbed his tea and downed almost all of it in one gulp in a successful attempt to replace the horrible taste of the ramen.

He heard a small giggle come from his left, he looked over to see Inko cupping her mouth while her shoulders steadily bobbed up and down. She brought her hand away from her mouth and a barely visible smile sat comfortably on her lips. "well it looks like you don't like that ramen," she said while bringing a few noodles up to her mouth before slurping it down in one gulp. He huffed and folded his arms across his chest, "you could put it like that,".

That sat in silence for a moment, letting the television distract them from the rising tension. Inko took it upon herself to talk first "I'm sorry being a bother, my problems are my problems," He looked back at Inko who seemed to have shrank back into herself, just looking at her made his heart sink. How could he convey how much he cared about her and Izuku. 'Come on think, your smart. Think of something, anything. She is vulnerable right now and YOU need to help her," then suddenly an Idea popped into his head. One that could kill two birds with one stone.

"I'll do it," Inko's gazed up to him, shock and confusion written on her face, "to clean his room I mean, that's what I am assuming you were doing," Her gaze stayed on him before tears started to appear in the corners of her eyes. Before he knew what happened he felt something impacted him. When he looked down at the object that hit him to see Inko rapping him in a bear hug. Tear rolled down her face as sobs ripped from her mouth. The words "I'm sorry," flowed from her mouth like rapids.

After a few minutes of letting Inko calm down she pulled away from him, she looked down to the floor avoiding eye contact. "I'm sorry," she said for the hundredth time. "It's just, you were so close to him when you were younger, and your only twelve" The women looked back up at him with tears rolling down her face "I'm sorry that I'm so selfis-," the women's words slur off as she slowly fell backwards. He lurched forwards catching her before she could hit the floor. Looking at her again when she was this close was heart wrenching, her lips were chapped, her cheeks were red with tear stains and eye bags that could rival that of Eraserhead.

He picked her up into his arms and carried her out of the lounge and into the hallway. From the hallway it was a short trek to her bedroom, the door was slightly ajar, he nudged his leg against it and let is swing gently open. The room was devoid of light with only the hallway to illuminate the darkness. He nudged the light switch with this shoulder the light bulb flickered a few times followed by a harsh electrical noise then the room plunged back into darkness.

He sighed, from all the times the bulb could have blown, now this had to be the worst. He made his way over to the window and he nudged the curtains slowly open, grey light flooded into the room. He let his eyes adjust to the light, he was pleasantly surprised to see the room in relatively decent condition. The bed was made, the floor was tidy and the shelves mostly devoid of dust. He walked over to the bed and pulled back the sheets, he placed her into on the mattress and pulled the sheets back over the top of her.

He returned to the hallway and cracked his knuckles, he walked over to the fallen cleaning appliances and set them back up. He turned to the door and took a deep breath; this was his chance to find evidence. This opportunity wouldn't arise again, so he had to do this as efficiently as possible. He opened the door and the breeze instantly hits him; the room hadn't really changed much since that day. The Bed was 'newly' made and the small laptop he and Izuku used to watch All Might videos was still on the floor, though it was long out of charge.

Some papers that were on his small desk had flew off and around the room thanks to the broken window. He stood still for a while, taking it all in, he hadn't been in this room since he was seven. Four years fly by really quickly. He looks to the cleaning appliances on the ground, a sigh escapes his mouth, sure most of it was clean but dust had coated every surface and grime had taken over the walls turning it a sickly green. The wind blew back into him and a terrible smell hit his nose. He advanced into the room and towards the smell.

He finally found the source of the stench, it was a container sitting next to the computer he and Izuku had used to watch All Might clips, he bent down to look at it. What he found was a pile of rotting food, it contained what looked like thousands of maggots and flies. He jumped backwards in disgust. He ran to the pile of appliances and dug out five cans of bug spray, he grabbed the cans genitally and walked over to the rotten package. He pointed the fist can at the food, maybe popcorn or perhaps cotton candy he couldn't tell, he sprayed at the infestation unloading the entire can into it.

A few of the bugs kicked the bucket, yet more rose to the surface to take their place. He picked up the second can and sprayed the contents. Like the last time the more that died the more that came to replace them. He did it again, then again, he was on his last can now and the infestation showed no sign of dying. He sprayed the last can and hoped for the best, yet again the infection stayed. He sighed and begrudgingly took the container into his hands and walked over to the window and looked out into the alley down below.

He looked over the fire escape and into the shadows down below, from what he could make out there was a dumpster on the opposite side's wall. He took a deep breath before he chucked the small container at the dumpster. To his dismay the container didn't land in the dumpster, instead it hit the rim and bounced out into the alleyway. His felt his stomach churn and his eyes water, the scene in the alley looked like something from a horror movie. The second that the container hit the floor the parasites inside it evacuated, the container had creatures of all shape and sizes running from it, like black sludge.

After a quick visit to the toilet to chuck up his guts, he was back in the room. He started off simple, he collect all of the loose pieces of paper scattered around the room. He then organised them into three piles: Homework, doodles and analysis. He tucked the doodles into one of the desks draws alongside the analysis, as for the four-year overdue homework, he threw all of it to the trash. He then got to work pulling all of the pieces of furniture away from the walls, the sound when he dragged the wooden legs of the bed across the hard wood floor made him want to return to the toilet again.

After that he got out the duster and got to work on the hard to reach places, the ceiling was the one that made him want to punch a hole in a wall. He wasn't exactly short, but at Eleven and clocking in at five foot six, he wasn't the tallest person in the world. After that he got to work with the bleach; he's heard that bleach could get rid of almost everything, but he guesses that doesn't include four year old grime. An undetermined amount of time later he had finished and was pushing all of the furniture back into its original place. He looked over the room and frowned. Sure he had done the bleach, but that was just the beginning. He wasn't looking forward to the rest of the cleaning.

* * *

He grunted again out annoyance, at this point he had finished almost everything. Inko wanted to change Izuku's room into a guest room, he could tell from the beige paint in the pile of cleaning appliances along with the IKEA build-able furniture in Inko's room. He had finished bringing all the major furniture pieces out into the hallway and had placed a blue plastic tarp over the hard wood of the room. Once again, the blue tarp came loose and started flapping in the breeze the broken window let into the room. He Finally had enough, he walked out of the room and over to the new pain of glass that was resting neatly in the rest of the pile.

He picked up the pain and brought it back into the room and placed it on the windowsill, he then looked at the window. He did not know how to change a window; he turned away from the it and took his phone out to consult google. He sighed, this was going to take a whi- he snapped around to look at the window, something didn't feel right. About the window of course. Then it hit him like a brick to the face, which (from experience) hit pretty hard, the window frame didn't have any glass in it... at all. Normally when a window is broken some of the glass doesn't come out from the frame and stays in the edges, yet the window had no sign of glass in it.

It was strange to him, stuff like this doesn't happen without a reason; there had to be some logical explanation to this... he couldn't think of any. He could only think that it was a quirk or something along those lines. He sighed inwardly before resigning himself to not knowing, he had no leads, and this had already hit a dead end. He had decided to just carry on redecoration, he just had to find a way to find a way of changing... the... window. Realisation dawned on him as a thought crossed his mind, the window had no glass remaining in the frame, that could mean that a person had taken the pane out.

That was a solid lead that made it impossible for Izuku to have ran away on his own, if his hypothesis was correct that is. Inko was paranoid as a mother and hadn't even let him enter the kitchen let alone anywhere near a screwdriver that is needed to deframe a pane of glass. He reached into his blazer's pocket and giddily pulled out his phone before snapping a photo of it, good for the investigation. He ripped his eyes away from his camera screen and shoved it into his pocket, he said he would do this for Inko and he damn well is.

* * *

After a few pain staking hours, the window had been re-installed, and the room painted. Now he had to wait for the paint to dry, this was one of the things he ever thought he would ever do, sit down and watch paint dry. He sighed to himself after sitting there for a few minutes and decided the more sensible option is to do something productive. He stood from his position on the floor and walked to the hallway, he had taken down all the All Might merchandise and brought them into the hallway with the furniture. It was weird for him to see all of the comics, posters and figures strung around carelessly. He walked into the washing room, which was also used as a storage room, and took out a box.

He returned from the washroom and into the hallway where he placed down the box, he started putting the hero merchandise into it. Figures, posters and toys were placed into the large box. Soon he had managed to stuff all of the hero stuff in and he brought the box back into the storage room. He walked back into the newly painted room to find that almost all of the paint had dried only leaving the lower portions. He collected the tarp from the floor and rolled in into a ball. He had almost finished. Well 'almost' he still had to assemble the furniture and arrange them in the room. His gut told him that he wouldn't like this.

A few hours later his gut was proved right. He hated IKEA, they made everything five steps longer than they have to be and they used an entire paragraph to tell him he had to get a hammer. Yet he couldn't really argue that much, at the end of the day, he had a guest room filled with furniture. He had to improvise a bit, using Izuku's matters and pillows. He also had to get new pares of sheets, because he didn't think All Might covers would fit the aesthetics of the room. The room was done, it looked nothing like before. He walked into the hallway. The old furniture was still there, but he could deal with that, he got to work immediately.

Using a saw he got from the Cupboard in the washroom, he disassembled the furniture one by one. Two hours and a few close calls with his fingers later, he was done. The only thing that remains was a pile of wood and a stack of paper from Izuku's desk. After sticking the paper in the box with the hero merchandise, he managed to fit all the wood into Five trash bags. One by one he brought them all down to the complexes dumpsters, after flinging them all in he walked back up to the apartment and walked into the hallway for what felt for the fiftieth time that day, he packed up the pile of cleaning appliances and brought it into the washroom.

He then left the apartment, after putting away the tea and unfinished noodles, taking a key with him just in case. He walked down to the street out side of the complex and felt a shiver over come his body, he pulled out his phone and check the time. He sighed, creating a plume of condensation, the night sky was illuminated with the nearby streetlights that blocked out the starts. His mother was going to kill him, he would have to sneak in without her noticing; he had grown good at this because of his midnight scuffles. But she would find him on his way to school anyway, that didn't matter though, he had his first proper lead in years, and he had to pour everything he could into this.

He would not fail

* * *

**...**

* * *

A yawn managed to escape Hiniko Tokiken's lips. Today had been exhausting, but in a good way. She had started the day bright and early, she went on a jog and got dressed for school before she had her classic English breakfast. She arrived to school early and finished her English homework on a bench in the school yard, when the bell rang she reported to homeroom were she got the news her application for her work study at the Mustafu construction company had been accepted. She then got her science test back from the teacher which she surprise got ninety-six on. At lunch they had been selling cupcakes with strawberry icing which tasted like food made by the gods.

After lunch there was music which moved forward fluidly and the last bell of the day came in a flash. About seven blocks before she reached her apartment complex a bunch of heroes were helping put out a large fire that had been ripping down building after building. These heroes included but not limited to; Backdraft, the fire hose hero and Thirteen, the space hero. After she managed to get an autograph from Thirteen, she continued down the trek home. Once she reached her apartment she grabbed her dinner from the fridge and got to work doing her homework on her lap top.

It took her a good few hours to complete it all, her chemistry gave her a lot of trouble, but she had finally managed to finish. And that brought you to her current situation, she was browsing the web for some info on her favourite heroes. She had managed to find out some interesting stuff about the Turbo Hero: Ingenium, yet she felt a small trickle of fatigue etch into her body. She looked at the time on the computer and realised that it had been only six. That confused her, the fatigue was coming in at the truckload now and she felt her eyelids start to flicker.

She tried to stand from her desk only to fall flat on the floor, she tried her best to fumble herself back to her feet but she felt something push her back down to the floor. She some how managed to shift her head around to see what was going on and what she saw was what looked to be a man standing her, his foot pressed against her back, he was wearing camo head to tow with what looked like a gun firmly gripped in his hand. The man bent down and grabbed her by the scruff of her shirt, she tried her best to scream out for help, but the most that came out was a weak whimper.

* * *

She was surrounded on all sides by darkness, she felt her body trembling and her head aching. She didn't know what was going on, she tried to turn her head yet the darkness is all that greeted her. She then tried opening her eyes which let a brilliant flood of light shine into her eyes. Everything was shrouded in a weird haze that made it close to impossible to see, she heard a vague beeping noise from the right of her and it made her head ache. She was tired and her body felt like it was made of jelly, she tried her best to prop herself up into a sitting up position. She tries her best to look around but the best she got was a white blur. The beeping noise started to accelerate and she felt her heart beat in her chest.

The world started to come into focus and her head felt clearer, she tried looking around the room again and what greeted her was what looked like a hospital room. She could see a hardwood door that probably lead into a hallway and a few other beds. In the corner she could see that one had the curtain drawn, she could hear a soft whining sound between the beeps that came from her right. She looked over to the beeping, finally having enough of the god awful noise to see a heart monitor that had the brand sticker torn off. It went up and down like mountains and valleys.

The wire from the monitor lead all the way from its bottom to a small devise on her finger tip, she ripped it off of her and the green line went flat letting out a flat and continues beep. She winced at the sudden noise and reached out to the heart monitor and pulling the power from the box. Yet even though she had pulled out the power, she could still hear a faint beeping from the bed with the drawn curtain. Well what could you do? she didn't want to go over to an other persons hospital bed just to tell them to shut up. No the most logical thing would be to call a nurse to tell them she was fine.

Well now that she thought about it, she didn't know why she was in a hospital never mind if she was fit to be able to leave one. She frowned to her self as she thought about it, the last thing she remembers was crossing a street towards a villain attack, after that it seemed if someone had taken a sledge hammer to the rest of her memory's leading up to her predicament. Perhaps she was hit by a car, no she didn't seem to have single scratch on her so being hit by a car was out. Or perhaps some falling debris hit her, no that was out for the same reason as the car.

She sighed, she could ask the nurse when she called her, which she didn't because of the tangent she had just travelled. She had visited a few hospitals before, so she knew the call nurse button had to be either: on the headboard or on a bedside table. She turned her head to check her bedside table, only to be greeted with the bed next to her. So she looked the other way to see nothing but yet another bed. Actually on second inspection, all the beds seemed close together and not as in a few meters away, she had enough room to stand up if she wanted but nothing more.

She felt a shiver run down her spine as she turned to look at the headboard, yet again she didn't find anything that could call a nurse. She felt fear grab her, one of the most effective ways to cause fear is through the unknown. She had no idea of a facet of her fate, sure she had no concrete reason to be terrified but being unnerved was fair game. She had no way to connection to the outside world and was trapped in a single room. Well actually she didn't know if she was trapped, she could just check out the windows and doors

She swung her feet down the side of the bed and pulled the cover off of her. She looked her self over to find an awful looking gown, it had to be at least five sizes to big and the woollen fabric made her itch all over. She tries her best to ignore it, she stumbles to her feet and walked over to the door. Her hand was placed on the walked towards the door. She reached her hand to the door handle and tried her best to push the handle down. She pushed against the door which refused to budge, she then looked out of the small window on top of the door into the hallway.

Instead of the well lit hospital hallway she was hoping for, she saw a dim corridor covered with suspicious stains. The concrete was cracked and the floor was riddled with small craters. She stumbled away from the door in shock, falling straight onto her but, and took a retake on the room she was in. It looked like a normal hospital room, not a suspicious thing about it. Then the quite whining from the bed with the drawn curtains went quite and she heard the beeping turn flat and drawn out. Fear gripped her. She had heard that sound before on her own monitor, expected she was sure they had not woken up... the person behind the curtain had flat lined.

She rushed to her feet her concern for her surroundings flew out the window as she ran to the bed. She swung open the curtains and moved over to the bed side. She instantly recoiled sending her sprawling across the bed directly behind her. Bile rouse in her throat as she stared at the sight in front of her, it was arguably the worst thing she had ever seen in her life. The boy was covered in electrical burns head to toe, black skin rouse up from were he was hit by what could only be described as a lightning bolt. His arms were bent at one hundred and eight degree angles and were colored a deep purple.

She stared at the boy for god knows how long before she heard the door of the room slam open, she span to look at what had smashed the door against its hinges. What looked like two doctors rushed into the room: the first was a blond woman who looked to be western, around the age of thirty, with steel rimmed glasses which were hanging around her neck. She was accompanied by a brown haired man with dark skin and brown hair rushed past her and next to the boy in the bed. Three people followed behind the two doctors, all in, what looked like, full military gear.

"Shit," the man cursed as he quickly attached some unknown devise around the boys neck, the women was preparing what looked like a syringe before promptly shoving it into the boys arm. The boy lurched up in his bed screaming, a force shook through the room which swept Hiniko from her feet and threw her into the wall. Her ears rang from the collision as she tried her best to struggled to her feet. She heard some muffled shot before a loud bang reverberated through her head. What sound like a scream came from the direction the boy was in.

She rubbed her eyes and slowly recovered from the impact with the wall and the explosion after, her eyes cleared and sound returned to her. The first thing she heard was the sound of sobbing, "Stand down or we will open fire!" one of three men said, all three of them had hand guns in their mitts. Yet that wasn't what was capturing her attention at the moment. That right belonged to the boy in the bed, who was now bolt upright in his bed clutching his wrist. His hand was gone, his arm just stopped at a stump which was spewing blood across the bed.

The two 'doctors', who had been thrown to the floor, stumbled to their feet. The man directed one of the armed men to drag the boy from the bed and out the door, the two of them took a moment to brush themselves down. The female doctor sighed and looked at the now blood soaked bed, "that is going to be a pain to clean," the male nodded his head as a smirk grew on his face. He turned to the door and walked towards the door waving his hand dismissively over his shoulder.

"Lucky we aren't the ones who'll clean it," he was now growing nearer to the door, she was unsure why the 'doctors' weren't acknowledging her. She looked around and realised that the shock wave had pushed her, and the beds, against the wall. The sheets and the curtains that separate the beds were both thrown over her, conveniently obscuring her from everyone else's vision while letting her have a perfect view of the outside. "one of you two deal with it," he called over to the two guards who still had their guns in hand. He reached the door and gestured the other doctor to join him.

Her heart sprang to her throat as her breathing increased, the man walked out the room, he was quickly followed by the female doctor who seemed to skip out the room. She let a breath she didn't even know she was holding escape through her lips. The brief moment of relief was snatched away as the women popped her head back the door frame, a vicious smile on her lips "And before that," she pointed her thumb directly towards Hiniko "would you be so kind as to show the newcomer its new home," she felt her stomach steer at the use of 'its' to refer to her, as if she wasn't even human

The armed men walked to her and grabbed her by the arms, she tried to run from them but she was quickly caught by on of them. They dragged out of the hospital room and into the dark corridor, she struggled and pleaded but they carried on forward as if she wasn't even their. They walked through countless hallways, each as revolting as the last. Blood, urine, grease and god knows what all smear the walls, some looked years old.

After what felt like hours they came onto a large pair of double doors, they looked badly damaged, like people have been ramming against them trying to get them open. The second of the pair of guards walked to the door while the other held her hands behind her back, he reached into his pocket and grabbed a key card. He swiftly swiped it against a slot next to the door she hadn't noticed until now.

The guards dragged through into the space behind the door, the image that greeted her would haunt her for the rest of her life. People, locked in cages. Cages were stacked back to back in pairs, they had a small gap between each pair; these than extended out to form isles. But that wast what she was paying attention to, no, what she was looking at was the size of the cages. They each were barely big enough for a small dog, let alone a human being. Urine, blood and excretion lay in puddles around them all of which drew the attention to the vermin that lurked in the corners of the large room.

Because of this, paired with the dim light, made the floor shift and writh as if it was alive. "Do you know what isle it's meant to be on," one of the military men asked the other. She felt her face go pale and her mouth go dry, beads of hat sweat rolled down her forehead as reality dawned on her. She started to thrash around more and more, she wanted to run, she wanted to go home, yet the more she tried the more it came apparent the futility of her efforts. The guards dragged her along the rows until they found the one they were looking for, all the while the smell of blood, vomit and piss filled her nose.

They dragged her along the 'isle' looking over a few of the cages, they then spotted one a couple cages over, she started to struggle again begging them to let her go. She struggled but they ignored her and pushed her down to cage and shoved her into it. She hugged her knees as she felt the grid walls of the small cage push against her as small shards of decayed metal dug into her skin, she shuffled on the spot in an attempt to dislodge them, yet it only caused them to burrow themselves further into her skin.

She raised her head from the position the military shoved her into and looked around, dread filled every molecule of her body as her eyes landed on increasingly horrifying things. Puddles of blood sat casual in front of her and pieces of rotten food discarded across the floor, slumped figures sit in the cages around her surround by yellow puddles. The urge to vomit rises from in her as she carries to look around, the blood in her face drains completely, her eyes settle on a creature sitting a cage across and a few cages over.

The beast is pure muscle, its body pushing against the frame of the cage it occupied, it skin is ripped across the joints as if its body grew independently of skin leaving only rotten remnants across its body. The things eyes budged in its socket, looking to be at the brink of popping like an over inflated water balloon. But worst of all, it looked like the thing had its entire scalp removed from its head leaving his brain exposed to the open air. She felt her breakfast rush through her throat before she snapped her head and let the vomit rip from her mouth.

After most of the contents of her stomach were spilt on the floor, she dissolved into a coughing fit. The little remaining food in her system came up back up and she was left with nothing but the pain in her stomach and her own gagging. Once she felt the fit finally subside she once again raised her head to look around, she looked to the cage directly to her left and she felt her heart soar. Beside her was a boy with long curly hair that reached down to his shoulders, with green eyes and a rumbas shaped pattern of freckles.

The boys expression was one of bemusement as he scanned her up and down, the boy was tapping the ground with his hand that let off a dull thud of metal hitting metal. She felt an ounce of confusion before the quite obvious horror of the situation hit her like a mallet to the face, she felt her expression shift as she looked over the boy once again. His long green hair was tangled and knotted, grease and blood staining the locks; his figure -that was tied into a ball- was small and slim, his ribs pushing through his chest with blood stained his own disgusting gown.

In her newly found panic words spilled from her mouth "H-help me, p-please," she felt tears fall down her face and sops rip from her mouth between words but she need to get him to help her, no he _had _to help her. "W-whats going on? I-I want to go h-home," the boy raised an eyebrow and his mouth quirked down into a sneer. He looked her up and down before looking away from her dismissively.

"Why should I help you," The words came from his mouth as barley more than a whisper, yet to her he was screaming. His raspy dry voice had crushed most of the hope inside of her, she stared at the boy who had barley gave her glance when swatting her away like a fly. He turned to face her his eyes narrowed into a glare "You wouldn't survive one second in the arena, nevermind an assignment, so why should I waste my time on dead meat," She stared at the boy with rage,

once again someone mentioned the arena along with the fact that she may as well be dead.

The boy stared at her for a few seconds, not waiting for a response, no more like summing up her whole worth as a person, before turning his gaze forward staring into empty space. He was terrifying, his thin frame making him look like he would be more than happy to swallow her whole; yet she pushed past her initial fears of the boy and managed to force a sentence that summed up all the emotions she was feeling "What do y-you want from me," she forced as much loathing into those few words as her situation allowed.

She knew he wanted something from her, from what she has heard from him, he sound way to logical for his own good, and because of that, if he didn't have a use for her then he would have flat out ignored her. The boys nose wrinkled as he offhandedly glanced at her before carrying on with his staring contest with the opposite cages, "for you to be quite," the words came out as a growl, he turned his gaze back to her. She felt rage boil over her at the boys words. She stared at him harder than before as hatred overcame her, that boy had just said he wanted her to _shut up_ in a situation like_ this_.

"W-whats the matter with you," she winced at her own stutter. The boy looked away for a moment, hand on chin, he looked like he was considering something. She hated it, he looked like he was considering if she was worth his time, she wanted to jump through this damn cage and strangle him. "Many things are the matter with me," oh he's pulling _that_ card now is he. He than raised his brow and looked at her again "But what do you want from me," well that through her through a loop. Come to think of it, what did she want from him.

Well it was an easy question at first, she wanted to go home, but how does one do that. She was stuck in an unfamiliar hell with blood and monsters surrounding her on all sides, the boy was her best chance to escape but it felt like she was just a inconvenience in his eyes more then anything. But that didn't change a thing. She needed to get home, she needed to see her family. "I want you to help me go back home,". That was her end goal, to get back home and carry on with her normal life.

The boy raised his eye brow in what looked, to her, like disapproval, yet a smirk appeared on his face as mirth made it's way into his eyes. "well I can't help you there," once again the boy blew her off as if he was batting away an over-attached puppy. She felt her eyes narrowed at the boy. "But i can help you in other ways," that gave her pause, 'other ways' what other ways.

"What other ways," she was suspicious of the boy, who wouldn't be, he had just pulled a 180 on her. The boy was quick to answer "well I could give you forewarning about this place," she glared at the boy harder than before, he sat in front of her his finger was tapping impatiently on the ground, his eyes meet her glare head on with a look of pure boredom and apathy. She was going to escape, no matter what that boy thought. She was going to escape, even if those guards had guns. She was going to escape, even if she couldn't feel her quirk within her.

"W-why would I need 'f-forewarning' if I'm going to escape," she said, the boy sarcastically rose an eye brow at her, she was growing unsure of herself and she was well aware that the sentence was more to convince herself than him. He responded almost instantly, again "do you think if I could escape, I would," that took her off guard, of course he would, that was an obvious question. Who wouldn't want to escape this hell hole. She was about to voice her opinion before the boy interrupted her. "for your information the answer is yes, so if that is the case, why am i still here,"

Those words hit her like a bullet train, he was still here, in a hell hole. But she was different, she had to be, she would be out of here in no time; this would be a distant nightmare, she will go back to normal. Images of the boy covered in electrical burns and the beast a couple cages over flashed through her head, the full weight of her situation started to crush her. She started to desperately search her surroundings for something, _anything_, that would let her escape from this waking hell. She felt her breath quicken and her vision blur.

She then felt pressure on her shoulder, she turned her head to look and saw the boy, he wore a grimace on his face with a spark of sympathy in his eyes. But she saw neither, her attention focused on the prosthetic he wore to replace his hand, the thing looked as if it was held together by spit and broken dreams, red trails came from it before rolling down his skin and dripping to the floor, _he was bleeding. _Everything then came crashing on her, she was going to die, her parent wouldn't know what had happened, she wouldn't accomplish her dreams. No, now she is just another sack of flesh in one of these cages.

And then she cried.


	2. No heroes

**...**

* * *

**Chapter Two: No heroes**

* * *

**...**

* * *

He would admit that this wasn't the first time that he had sneaked back into his room in the dead of night, sure the reasons were much different, but he was still rather familiar with this situation. Though this was different, very much so, his mother actually knew he wasn't home and that was what was giving him pause in this normally routine task; his grip on the fire escape increased as he subconsciously activated his quirk, partially melting the rail. He was staring at his window as he debated the pros and cons of jumping of the building and falling to his death. It would be a lot less painful than whatever his mother had in store for him.

He quickly dismissed the thought and lay his hands flat against the window before slowly sliding it up and open. Unlike Inko's apartment block, he was lucky enough to have a sliding window which made it a lot easier to sneak back into his apartment at four in the morning. He placed his hands against the windowsill and with a practised ease, he slotted his body through the window in one swift movement. He lightly slipped his shoes of and placed them in the corner of his room before he slipped out of his school uniform and into his pyjamas.

In his haste he forgot about closing the window, and unfortunately for him, a large gust of wind blew into his room causing his room to descend into chaos. His neatly stacked homework went flying around his room as his curtains flapped around violently, his desk chair suddenly fell to the ground with a large crash. He rushed to the window, cursing under his breath all the while, before slamming it closed. He felt every hair on his body stand on end in panic as he hoped that neither of his parents heard him. He had no such luck.

He heard feet slam against the hallway floor before his door was ripped open against its hinges. He flinched away from the door and half closed his eyes, he was sure it was both his mother and his farther, any hope he had flew from his grasp. He waited for his mother to start screaming, to start cursing, to do anything. But when it never came, he slowly opened his eyes, when he looked backed to his door, he could see both of his parents standing there staring at him. This carried on for a second before a hiccup rung through the room.

His mother was sobbing, he took a double take, yes that was right. Her hand was up to her mouth and tears were running down her face; both his parents rushed to him, his mother falling halfway. He felt their arms rap around them as the both cried into his head and his stomach respectively, he felt himself blink, his arms were in the same place in front of his torso in a vague defensive position. He was not expecting this.

"Don't you ever, ever, do that to us again," his mother sobbed as she tightened her grip around his waist. His father clung to him, tears running into the top of his head. He didn't know what to do, he was expecting a lot of things, but this certainly was not one of them. "We were so scared that you were gone," his mother carried on crying into him and clutch to him like he would disappear, "I don't want you to go, not like Izuku did, I don't think I could cope like Inko". Images of Inko crying and weeping, her constantly depleting health and her three attempts on her own life flashed through his head.

Imagining his own mother like that... he didn't want to think of it. But he did. She must have been so scared; he had just stormed out of the house and hadn't returned for more than eight hours. He refused to think of it any longer, but every time he tried to strike the image away it would come up again. He imagined his mother breaking down, his mother refusing to leave the house to the point of half dying, HIS mother trying to end it all.

Bakugo like to think of himself as a strong hero, he went out at night and stopped thieves, rapists, and murderers with a sadistic smile on his face. He has spat in the face of heroes and kicked villain so hard in the junk that their voices had raised five octaves. He, the eleven-year-old Katsuki Bakugo also known as the vigilante Ground Zero, broke down crying in his parents arms. The very thought of his mother hurting inside as much as aunt Inko brought him to his knees, a tidal wave of apologies flew from his mouth as he clutched onto his mother.

He was an idiot, he hated himself. He was the worst person on the planet. He had scared her so much, he had failed her, like he had failed Izuku that day and how he had been failing Inko from the beginning. He cried harder, he had to work harder, he didn't want aunt Inko to hurt anymore. His phone sat heavy in his hand, it contained the picture of the broken window, he would use that evidence to find Izuku and whoever took him. He would find them and murder them so that no-one had to hurt like that again.

* * *

The day was Friday, four days after the break down, and he fucking hated it, his mother had made him promise to never do that to her again and had locked all the windows in the house permanently and told him she would watch him all day to make sure he didn't pull the same shit again. But that wasn't what was bothering him, after his vow to work harder he used most of his class time on the case. The teachers noticed that he finished all the work given to him in half the time he usually did and had asked him if the work was 'too' easy for him' before pouring work from high school onto his desk.

He wasn't sure if it was to prove a point or something, but he didn't care, he completed it all the same and went back to making theories in one of his notebooks. Another thing that changed was that his 'friends' had turned against him, it made sense of course, he would ignore them when they tried to talk to him and he would tell them to 'fucking stop' whenever they tried to get his attention by bullying one of his other classmates. But still, he didn't really care, all it took was one or two sparks from his hand and a sadistic glare to make them piss off.

Whispers and rumours spread across the class about what was up with him, which also made sense, he spent most of his time pretending to be an asshole and jerking himself off before, so his sudden change of attitude made everyone steer clear. Which was pretty ironic, he had acted like an asshole to make himself be left alone which drew people to him and when he acted normal it made them stay away. But he wasn't complaining.

But all of the whispering, the two assholes staring at him from across the room and the constant surveillance of his mother was pissing him off more and more. This paired with all his theory's sounding like crazy talk was making him get increasingly more agitated, he had to do something to blow some steam sooner or later or he was going to blow up the school and the street it's on with one big, quirk powered boom. So, he made a plan. In DT he managed to get a hand on one of the screw drivers and shoved it into his backpack.

Once he got home and did his homework in front of his parents, he slipped the screwdriver up his sleeve and left to his bedroom where he placed it inside his desktops power unit. At eight o'clock his mother came in his room and searched it for the keys to the windows and the front door before leaving and locking the door behind her. He smirked to himself as he lay flat on his bed, he was going to wait until midnight and then pull off his plan. He was going to have to thank the person who kidnapped Izu for giving him this idea before he murdered them.

When midnight came, he slowly sneaked up to his PC unit before slowly taking the screwdriver from its hiding place. He placed the item on the desk before double checking everything around the room, his desk chair was flat on the ground and his homework was in his desk and his duvet was under his bed. He smiled. He unscrewed the glass from the window before quietly placing it on the floor, he was taking a gamble with this; if a large gust of wind blew into his room then he was screwed. Because of this he was going to have to lower his patrol time from six hours to two.

He slipped out of his window and climbed up the fire escape until he got to the top, he then climbed onto the rail and jumped over to the apartment block next to his roof. He lifted his whole body on top of it before climbing over the rail. He then ran to the other rail and jumped on it then off and over to the next apartment blocks roof, he carried on until he reached the edge of the residential area and reaching the edge of the city which was full to the brim with warehouses. He jumped off the building and activated his quirk to stop himself just before he hit the floor. He ran through the warehouses for a few minutes until he found the warehouse he was looking for.

He used his quirk to fly up to the outside window and vaulted through before once again using it to stop himself falling, once inside he walked to the centre of the warehouse and stamped on a loose tile, flipping it off the ground. He lifted the tile slowly, revealing a box underneath it which he took from the hole he had dug by hand. Inside of the box was his costume, it consisted of a tank top and cargo pants with an oversized hoodie, all of it was camo. Along with it was a white half mask that showed only his mouth and hid his face. He only had a few bits of support gear, two homemade smoke bombs and flash bangs along with twelve pieces of rope.

To be honest, he needed to find a better way of hiding his equipment. All it would take was one hero or cop with sonar or x-ray vision for his entire parade to fall to the ground, but at least it was better than keeping it in his house. One security tape of Ground Zero climbing in or out of his window and he would be done for, but he does suppose he is a master of dodging security footage. The last time he asked a 'friend' of his in the states to hack into the police archives, they had barely anything on him, with the best quality video being of him smashing a villain round the jaw at 440p.

He slipped out of his pyjamas and into his costume before putting the pyjamas into the box, putting the box into the hole and putting the stone slab into its rightful place. He stood up and walked over to the warehouse doors and pulled on one before slipping out into the street. From there he activated his quirk and blasted himself to the top of one of the buildings and making his way back into the residential district, he scanned over alley after alley looking for trouble as he jumped from one roof to another. He felt a smile grow across his face; this is what he needed.

After thirty minutes of uneventful patrolling he heard a scream a few buildings over; it was high pitch, either young boy or young woman, once he made it to the building and looked down, he saw that it was the latter. A young woman was being pinned to a wall by a man with a knife, it was a scenario he was uncomfortably familiar with. He could hear the man speak to her in a deep lustful voice as he ordered her to strip, she begged for him to stop before calling someone to help. He'd seen enough.

He silently dropped to the first fire escape before he started to jump down them two at a time before he jumped clean off the third floor. He landed into a crouch, still staying quiet. A look of shock spread across the woman's face; he brought a finger to his lips. He approached the two and tapped the man on the shoulder, he span around ready to attack. He was met with thin air. That's because Bakugo had already used his other shoulder as a step up and jumped up into the air, he lands next to the lady with a thud as he brought both his hands in front of him.

Having heard the sound of Bakugo landing, he span back around with wide eyes as he saw Bakugo standing in front of him. "Boom," he said before he let his quirk loose. An explosion bloomed from his palms that launched the thug back into the alley wall with a sickening crack. He got out of his ready stance and brushed himself off before he walked up to the thug and rapped him up in rope, he turned to the woman to see if she was okay. She was standing their hands by her sides, staring at him. "Hey, can you call the police. If you can call them now, they'll be here in fifteen minutes, all you'll have to do them your statement and you can be on your way,"

The woman stared at him for a few more seconds before she started to fumble in her purse for her phone, once she found it, she called the police and described what happened. Happy that she would be safe, he place his hands behind his back and prepared himself to launch up and onto the rooftop. Before he did, he was interrupted when the woman called out to him "W-who are you" a grin came onto his face as he looked over his shoulder to address the girl.

"The names Ground Zero," and he activated his quirk, causing himself to get launched up and onto the edge of the rooftop. He hopped the railing and carried on with his patrol, once again he was jumping from roof to roof. He smiled to himself, this was exactly what he had needed to blow off some steam.

After a couple hours of patrol, he had successfully cleared his head. He had taken down a few more thugs and even a few serial killers before he had finished. He returned to the warehouse and slipped back into his pj's and hid his costume back in its hiding place. The main reason he had made his vigilante persona was actually just to have an anonymous identity, he never knew when he had to do something shady to get some info on Izu's whereabouts. But after one or two incidents of him saving civilians and he was a registered vigilante.

He had even made the news when he had helped take down a gigantification villain a few blocks away. Thankfully, the attention fell away, but he still remembered the high his ten-year-old experienced while he watch TV in the afternoon when a low resolution, security camera shot of his vigilante persona came on screen. After he got back to his place, he slipped through the open window frame before checking around his room for anything that had been disturbed. After he found nothing out of place was it that he returned everything to how it was.

He placed the screwdriver back in his PC's power unit before he made his way to his bed and slipped under the duvet, he looked to the side and saw the time read 4:21 am. He smiled to himself as he thought about his patrol, the most important role of his vigilante persona was investigation. If a twelve-year-old was found performing investigations, their parents would be called; if a vigilante was found performing investigations, the heroes were called (which he preferred to chase him a lot more than his mother).

But the other was something he gained a passion for as time went on, he loved saving people. The fact he could help people brought butterflies to his stomach and heat to his chest. He loved it and he wouldn't give it up for the world, he would give it up for Izu but that was an entirely different story. He was happy that he had the ability to help, the fact he had the power to help and save people were he had failed Izu made him confident, when he found the people who took Izu away, their guts would be blown across the concrete.

His mind then wandered even farther then before, he thought of the investigation team that were tasked with taking him down. Back when he just started the team was massive, it included dozens of officers and a couple of detectives and a few B list heroes which was nothing to spit at, he did happen to spit at them but that was besides the point. Nowadays it consisted of one detective and a couple of officers, it brought him great joy that several highly regarded detectives gave up on finding him. It was comforting to know that he could look for Izu in peace.

He closed his eyes and slept.

* * *

**...**

* * *

Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi closed his eyes and slammed his head on his desk, a loud groan escaped from his lips as a wave of coffee cups fell off his desk. It was 4:21 am and he wondered how the hell he let himself pull another all-nighter at the station. He had been assigned the Ground Zero case about a year ago and he swore that this vigilante would give him an aneurysm; he had seventeen different files placed on his desk through the night. He looked at one of the latest files, it was especially annoying the fact that he had managed to take down one of his other cases, the Nightstalker serial murder case.

The fact that he had been trying to track the Nightstalker for two and half months and Ground Zero managed, not only to find him, but take him down in one evening, made him want to rip his own hair from his head. He flipped open Ground Zeros case, it was a at least nine centimetres thick and that was impressive for a vigilante, he read through the basics. He made his debut four years ago when he stopped a man with a class three mutation type quirk from stealing from a department store, the majority of his vigilantism since then has been committed underground with him only having one more media appearance two years ago.

There is minimal security footage of him, and the footage that had been received by the police had been low quality; but from what has been seen they were able to make a basic summery of his appearance: he was around 5'4 foot, slightly above average build, pale skin and he wears all camo cargo pants and hoodie. They had never been able to get an accurate shot of his face, it being constantly shrouded in the shadow of his hoodie. After that it was a long list of his take downs and accomplishments and the procedure to be followed if he were captured.

He yawned, this was what any detective in their right mind would call hell. There was basically nothing on him and the info they did have was mediocre at best, he was tempted to just give up and cry under a bridge somewhere. The people who were saved by Ground Zero were no help either, the bastard barely talked. With him only telling them to call the police and that gave them nothing about his personality or his whereabouts. The only consistent thing they know about him is his gender and that he stuck to working in Musutafu city.

He had quickly rose through the secret ranks of vigilantes, becoming not only the most efficient but also the most elusive. With his existence only being kept alive in the secret forums that worshiped him in the same breath as Eraserhead. The fact that he was able to cover his track so nonchalantly and efficiently made him different than most other vigilantes who only did it for the popularity that came with it.

He lifted himself from his desk and onto his feet, he walked over to the side of the room and pulled his trench coat over his body. He was going down to interrogations, there was one of the people Ground Zero had saved in there and he refused to miss the chance to learn even an ounce of information on the vigilante. He opened his office door and walked through the station and down into interrogations, he walked up to the door that belonged to the victim and he stepped in.

Once the door was open, the victims head snapped up and to him, red trails ran down her face and her eyes were red. "Hello, I'm Detective Tsukauchi and I'm going to ask you a few questions. Then you'll be on your way, that okay with you?". The victim nodded, she looked back down at her hands, which she was twirling between each other, she was obviously nervous. "Okay first up, what is your name and what were you doing before you were attacked,"

"M-my name is, Rebecca Johnson and I-I was going to the airport. I was going to visit my f-family in the states," He wrote that down in his notebook. He had used his quirk, human lie detector, to see if the statement was the truth. It was. "I-I moved to Japan for work, but it is my brother's wedding in a few weeks. So I was going to go over," that was all true as well.

"Okay then, could you tell me what happened before Ground Zero found you," the victim, looked back up at him, she was in obvious discomfort. She opened her mouth as if to speak but only a wisp of air came from her lips. She started to break down, sobs racked from her as fresh tears ran down her face as she relived one the worst moments of her life in her head. He came over to her side and rubbed circles on her back "I understand if it's difficult to talk about things like this, we have all the time in the world, so don't rush yourself,".

"I was walking along the street and...," she sobbed, "I w-was grabbed an-and there was this man, he was tall and re-really ugly. H-he was drooling while h-he pointed a knife at me a-and he told me to-" she started to cry even harder, she brought her hands to her face and sobbed uncontrollably. After a few minutes, she had managed to stop crying enough to carry on speaking "I-I tried to scream a-and shout, but he s-shoved the knife further to-towards my face,"

"And that's when Ground Zero came?" The victim nodded, tears still ran down her face and her head was still in her hands, "from there he used his quirk to take out the criminal before he used rope to tie them up. Did you notice any defining features: any scars or wounds; did you see his face," She shook her head. To be honest, that made him want to bash his head against a wall. No Leeds or clues, not even a brief flash of his eyes.

"I-i couldn't see his face, he wore a mask-k, though he d-did have his mouth exposed," that snapped him out of his brooding, she was able to see his face. That was the most that they had managed to get on the guy in the four years he has been active. Whenever he thought had got him in checkmate by getting a single shred of evidence, he reveals they had been playing risk all along. It doesn't bloody matter if it was just his mouth, "he also looked a bit o-on the short side to," she wasn't wrong, he was only 5'1.

"Back to his face, did you see any defining features there: a missing tooth, any decay?" He was desperate, this was the most he had gotten from any one given case. Sure, on the grand scale of things, this was irrelevant, but at this point anything was enough. "Did you manage to catch his voice," now he may have been too ambitious with that one, as it stands he had only been heard to speak one time and it was the case that had managed to make the news.

"Well he-e didn't have any missing teeth, he didn't have rot e-either," perfectly average teeth, seemed odd that a combat-oriented vigilante had no chipped or missing teeth but oh well. "An-and when he talked he had this r-really confident air about him, like he k-knew exactly what he was doing and that e-everything would be okay, no matter what," that also shocked Naomasa, he spoke, that really took him of guard. No matter the video clip or recording, no matter the witness testimony or interrogation. Ground Zero never spoke except in a quite monotone, there had only been one exception to that rule.

"Thank you, that was really helpful. Is there anything else that you thick could be useful to the case?" She shook her head, "well then, I will be on my way. Thank you again for your time Ms Johnson," She nodded her head, with that he raised himself up and out of his chair and made his way to the exit. All in all, he didn't gain that much evidence, but that wasn't what he really got from this whole experience. Through this whole thing she was truthful, that means that he isn't impossible to find, this broke the stigma he had built up for the past year. He was determined, he would bring Ground Zero to justice.

"Wait!" He stopped in his tracks and looked back at the victim "y-you're not going to arrest him, are you. I-I mean he helps people, so you h-have to let him go... r-right," he looked back at the victim, she had just gone through what had to be the worst day of her life and she was still concerned about Ground Zero first and foremost. He looked at her, beaten and broke and he felt his mind start to go to war. He had to bring down Ground Zero, he broke the law, it was his duty, it was his job. But at the same time, he was the light in the darkness for people like Rebecca.

He smiled apologetically "I'm sorry, but a case is a case," Rebecca looked back down at her hands as tears began to well back up in her eyes, he left before he could witness her cry. Yes, it was his job to hunt people like Ground Zero even if they do good. But the fact of the matter is that he had come across the conundrum before and he already had an answer, the law was the law. A case was a case. He was going to bring Ground Zero to justice, regardless of what he felt on the matter.

He was, undoubtedly, in over his head, he had never in his life encountered a case as hard as this one. He understood why the other detectives quit, but he refused to do so, he was a detective and he was going to do his god damn job. He sucked in a breath of air before letting it come peacefully out again, he walked back up to his office where he had all of his files. He started to tidy all the files from his desk and the empty coffee cups from the floor. He hated tidying, but not as much as the Ground Zero case so that's a big plus.

He took his phone from his pocket and started to dial a number he had burned into his mind, after pressing call it started to ring. After the third ring the phone picked up "This better be important, I'm on patrol," the voice of Eraserhead came from the speaker. The man was an underground hero, meaning he refused to come into the limelight and have any credit over the cases he solves. The man was also a teacher at UA, but more importantly he was renowned for his adeptness at dealing with vigilantes. If anyone was able to track down Ground Zero, it was him.

"Yeah it is, we have a vigilante problem," he knew that bringing Eraserhead on the case while they had barley any evidence was a little unfair to him, but he didn't really know what to do except bring him on. He could hear him groan and mutter about how much sleep he was going to lose from this, he wasn't exactly wrong either, he was going to miss the most sleep of his life on the Ground Zero case. But to be honest he didn't care anymore "Ever heard of Ground Zero,"

* * *

**...**

* * *

He had been sitting here listening to her cry for the last two and a bit hours now and it started to piss him off. Sure she was in the equivalent to hell and sure she just found out that she was going to most probably die. But so did everyone else and they didn't spend all day crying, well actually a few did but he really didn't care. He understood what she was going through, and he knew that she had to let it all out on her own, but he was starting to wish she would do it a little bit more quietly. She wasn't doing it at the same force as the beginning, but her sobs were enough to make him want to punch her in the face.

He was basically sitting there, twiddling his thumbs, waiting for her to stop crying. He looked back over at her to see how she was doing; she had basically completely stopped with only a few hiccups emerging from her frame every once and a while. He started to tap his prosthetic against the floor, the sound of metal hitting metal filled the air; he was, once again, bored. But still, he waited. He wanted to be a hero when he was younger, so why the hell can't he help a helpless person in one of the worst positions a human being can be in.

The girl had completely stopped crying at this point and had resorted to have buried her head between her knees. If he were to help her, he would have to do it quickly as the assessment happens soon after being brought back to your cage. "Whats your name?" that seemed to be a good place to start, she looked up from her knees, her eyes were red with streaks and silent tears still fell from them. "Mines Izuku, if that helps, but I would prefer you to call me 5509 when there are guards nearby"

The girl carried on staring at him, her eyes wide, "I-i'm Hiniko T-Tokiken," she said, she was still staring at him with wide eyes that were starting to make him uncomfortable. She was not in the best of places, but he would appreciate it if she stopped staring at him like he had just kicked a puppy. He wouldn't bring it up as to upset her, but still it was a little weird "Wh-whats with the n-number," oh, he thought she would have noticed it by now but he couldn't really blame her for it. She was in a death trap and learned that she was as good as dead, who in their right mind would check their wrist.

He sighed, before rolling up the sleeve on his left arm to reveal the underside of his wrist, on it was a slightly faded tattoo that read 5509 along with bar code directly underneath it. She recoiled away before rolling up her own sleeve and gasping when she saw the number 9036 on her own wrist with a bar code right next to it. "That's the first thing I'll tell you about, all the 'personnel' will regard you by that or by your station, but that doesn't really matter" There were only two stations by his knowledge, a newbie and an agent. Newbies were people that had just been brought into The Warehouse and Agents are the people who passed the assessment.

"T-that's so cruel," She was clearly distressed by the fact that they were branded, she would definitely not be happy when she found out what the assessment and the arena entailed. She looked back up at him "we're p-people, not numbers" well technically she was right, but in the eyes of The Warehouse it didn't matter. What mattered is if they produced any amount of profit, though he supposed that wasn't the point that she was trying to make. He decided to just nod his head in agreement, no point in starting a meaningless argument.

"Yes, you're right, but that isn't important. You will be going through literal hell in the next few days, so contemplating all the human rights these guys have breached and all the war crimes they've committed is pointless," she narrowed her eyes at him, she was miffed by that, but who gives a shit. He needs to tell her about what she is about to go through "More importantly, the assessment. This will be the determiner of your fate here, first things first, if you fail, you'll be turned into one of those things," he pointed his thumb at the Nomu on the nearby cage.

He watched her face go pale, the reason he started with that is because the next part would be especially hard for her to comprehend doing. "Okay, so in a bit you'll be taken to a room and drugged to sleep," that made her face go even paler, and her eyes go wider "then you'll wake up in a decently large room with someone else, you'll then be told to kill the other person, though, it could be difficult if they are stronger than you so be tricky," She stared at him again, she was shaking.

"I-I would never do th-" he cut her off by gesturing back to the Nomu in the cage across from theirs "your funeral, quite literally," she stared at the Nomu then down at her hands, she was getting paler by the second. "once that happens, they'll send you back here and you'd have nothing else to worry about, well unless you get the attention of the doctors. But other than that, all you have to do is focus on winning and then you'll be alright,"

"al-alright, alright, they want me to kill someone and you think that I'll be a-alright," she was shaking even harder now, and tears returned to her face with a vengeance. After her outburst she had dissolved into inaudible muttering as she slowly started to curl in on herself, he was right, she hadn't taken it well. He waited patiently to snap out of the muttering, but it only started to turn slowly to sobs of desperation.

He heard heavy footsteps come from down the aisle and when he turned, he saw a pair of guards walking towards them, he cursed under his breath. Guards never patrolled in pairs, so they must be retrieving something. Not the Nomu as it would require at least a dozen and not him as after his escape attempt, he had always been accompanied by at least five guards, no they were after Tokiken. Normally he would be thankful for them to drag away someone as noisy as her, but he had made a promise to himself to drag her through this.

"Damn it all, hey, I know this isn't a good time but here something else you need to know. You have bombs implanted into your wrists and ankles, so do everything the guards tell you, okay!" he whispered to her. If she was going to get through this, which she would, then she would have to be at the top of her game in the assessment. The guards walked to her cage and unlocked it with one of their key cards, they grabbed under her arms and dragged her out of the cage. They both stood on either side of her as they started to drag her along. "Tokiken, if don't make it back I swear to god,".

The guards stopped in place, one gestured for the other to stay put as they walked back up to his cage. "What the fuck did you just say," he stayed quiet, he knew better then answering back. The guards snorted before crouching down to his level and reaching through the bars and grabbing his hair, he then slammed his face against the metal of the front of the cage. "that's what I thought, I suggest that if you don't want to end up like your hand that you buck up your ideas," the guards spat in his face before standing back up and joining his colleague.

Hiniko looked back over her shoulder to look at him before she was dragged out of sight, he raised his hand to his face and wiped the spit from his face. He swore once again under his breath before he wiped it off on the floor beside him, he wasn't entirely sure about her chances. He was still due for the arena himself, but he wanted to be there for when she got back so he hoped it wasn't going to be his turn for a while.

* * *

Well he wouldn't be their when she got back, he had been dragged from his cage by nine different guards and dragged to the prep room where he was drugged and brought up here to the solid metal room of the arena waiting room. There was a platform attached to the wall by two chains that gave it the appearance of a prison bed, he was familiar with this room, he had started to come here about two years ago. The room was made of metal, from top to bottom, the first time he woke up in here he had felt out the room, he had found only the metal door on the far wall as the only exit and entrance.

He wondered how Tokiken was doing, she was probably done by now, sitting in her cage rocking back and forth crying or something like that. He couldn't really blame her either, the first time he had taken a life he had cried for a whopping five hours without stop. It hadn't been pretty either, he didn't do it as cleanly as he does now, once his seven-year-old self pinned the other kid down he had repeatably smashed his balled fists into the downed kid with apologises rolling from his mouth. That was not one of his favourite memories.

His first encounter with the arena was also painful, but he'd prefer if he didn't think about it. A familiar sound of clanging metal on metal came from the door as it started to slide open, he lifted his body from the metal platform and to his feet. Light spilled into the dark room, he walked towards it until he was outside the door; he felt himself wince at the intensity of the light above him, although it felt like sun light, he knew it wasn't. He had once gazed to the source of the lights and saw it came from several UV projectors atop the caverns ceiling several hundred meters above him.

He was once again in the arena, he started to stretch as he looked at the crowd. He had long ago learnt that depending how well you perform on assignments would determine how high profit you are to The Warehouse and from that, what kind of arena you are put in. If you are relatively low profit or new, they just put you in a room with another agent of your level and tell them to go at it. He figured that they had to record it somehow, therefore 'costumers' could just ask for what they want and the whoever deals with costumers would give them a selection of videos to choose from.

Slightly higher profit agents get a slightly levelled up version of what the others had, a bigger room with better lighting and actual ground that wasn't made from metal. But then came high profit agents, they often had more effective or destructive quirks, so they get a literal arena floor. It was around one-hundred meters wide with sand and small rocks to comprise the land, to complete the coliseum aesthetic the costumers come and watch the fights in person. Small time thugs and criminal masterminds all sat in the same seats.

Usually, the thugs aren't the ones to try and impress, they often just come here to watch a show. What he needed to do was get the attention of any criminal organisation if he were to hope to have a good assignment. He gazed across the arena floor to have a look at his opponent, he had tangled earthy green hair with sickly pale skin and arms that seemed to come down to his knees. From the look on his face and his general malnourished body, it was obvious that he had been in The Warehouse a similar amount of time as he has.

They both stared at each other for a short while until they both sprang into action; a blast of air came towards him as he charged at the boy. He swatted it away as if it were a fly as he carried on charge, the boy had two cyclones at his feet that blasted him backwards and away from him. He frowned, he activated his quirk in his arms and watched a familiar blue glow overcome them as blue lightening crackled just on the surface of his skin. He swung his arms out and then back in to make a monstrous clap that sent a shock wave towards his opponent.

The boy crouched low and placed his hands on the ground, a pillar of rock sprung from under the sand that blocked the boy from his shock wave attack. The boy then jumped up and over the wall and sent another blast of air at him, he placed his right leg as far back as he could manage as he got ready for a kick. He waited until the air blast was upon him, which wasn't very long, and he kicked. The blast of air produced overpowered the other boys and rocketed towards them, the boy responded by jumping over the air blast and using two newly made cyclones to boost him through the air.

Izuku crossed his arms over his face expecting a head on assault, a thud came from behind his back and he spun around to confront it; he saw the boy had landed in a crouch directly behind him and had both his hands extended. He activated his quirk just as the boy unleashed a torrent of fire upon him, he watched as the quickly advancing fire slowed and the sound of the crowd cheering started to get deeper and more drawn out until he was surrounded by pure silence. Lightening jumped from his skin freely and impacted the ground leaving small chard patches of sand, he jumped to the side out of the way of the fire blast, he landed a few meters away.

He started to punch the air randomly in the direction of the frozen boy until he thought he had done an adequate job at it, he let his quirk slowly drain from his body and the lightening started to reign in and subside. When life returned to the world, the blast of fire and it's master were immediately blown away by the immense air blast he made when the world had frozen. The boy was flung to the arena wall where he impacted, he left a sizeable crater in his wake, the boy stumbled to his feet; blood dripped from his mouth and nose, and he clutched a hand to his side. He had probably broken a rib.

He jumped forward as he charged up his quirk up and across his body once again, he charged at the boy and kicked him in the side. He was launched into the middle of the arena, he started to use his quirk to bounce around the boy, kicking off the air and bouncing off the ground before attacking from random angles. The boy was basically being thrown around as if he were a ragdoll and at this point, he didn't stand a chance, but the crowed was loving it. He sent a large strike to the boys side sending him flying away from him and onto his back, yet somehow the boy struggled to his feet.

The boy summoned another pair of cyclones and blasted himself forward towards him, he activated his quirk across his body once more and the world froze in place. He had shown off enough and he didn't want to give that boy a chance, he channelled his quirk into his legs and jumped forward. Landing next to the boy, he sent all his power to his arm closest to the boy and slammed his fist into the boys gut. He started to twist his body as time started again and he slammed the boy into the ground with a resounding crash. A colossal blast of air sprung forth that blew across the arena pushing all the sand to the edge and creating a massive crater.

He stood atop the unmoving frame of the boy as the crowd cheered, he sent his quirk through his leg and stomped on the boys head crushing it. He walked away from the boy and waited for the moving to commence, after winning in the high profit arena they dart you to sleep and you wake up at your assignment. He waited patiently for the dart to come, the world started to go fuzzy and everything started spinning and he knew that he was about to fall asleep. He fell to the ground.

* * *

...

* * *

She looked back over her shoulder and saw Izuku looking back, spit still on his face and a meaningful look in his eyes; they rounded a corner dragging him out of her view, she looked back forward. They had brought her to the pair of doors that had brought her into this place, the newly named guards dragged her through them and down the winding corridors of the facility as her bare feet dragged through puddles of blood and urine. After a while they came across another door, the guard to her right pulled a key card from his belt and swiped it on a scanner that let out a high-pitched buzz in response.

Upon entering the room she realised, to her relief, that it wasn't some kind of torture chamber. Instead it was a room with twelve different doors attached to it, there was also what looked like a group of twelve medical trolleys to her right. One of the guards grabbed one of the trolleys while the other picked her up and placed her onto it, they then rolled her over to one of the doors before opening it and rolling her in. From the view on the trolley she could tell that the room was only a little wider and longer than the trolley itself with the ceiling being a few feet taller than her, it had what looked like vents at the top and bottom.

She heard a hissing sound coming from the vents, when she looked, she noticed a noxious looking purple gas was flowing into the room. She was about to panic and try to leave the room when she remembered Izuku's words _'Okay, so in a bit you'll be taken to a room and drugged to sleep…'_ he had experienced this and was still in one piece. She lay on the trolley and tried to calm herself, in through the nose and out through the mouth, she was going to be fine and nothing was going to change that. She inhaled some of the gas.

Images of the monster a few cages over from hers flashed into her head, _'if you fail, you'll be turned into one of those'_ Izuku's voice once again rang through her head. She had to kill someone, or be turned into a monster, she started to breathe faster making more gas come into her lungs. As the world started to turn fuzzy and her ears started to ring, she imagined her family. Her annoying little shit brother and her caring mother and charismatic farther, they would be crying around about now. They would be hanging up fliers and calling the police daily, that thought brought a smile to her lips as her eyes closed.

_Nothing._

_She dreamed of nothing; it was just her in a void of meaningless black. But then suddenly, a fountain of colour sprayed around her, great blues and perfect reds. Hearty oranges and amazing browns, but it was not them she noticed, it was something off in the distance. A feebly misty green, she walked to it as the vortex of beautiful colours flew past her and played. **Why are you all alone, why not join them **the green wobbled in place, flowing in a quite beauty that the other more striking colours lacked** I tried but the others won't let me **she nodded in understanding. It was feeble and they were strong._

_Suddenly, a great pain grew through her, she looked down and saw that a light grey was flowing through her body along her veins._

_She reached out to the green and grabbed a hold of it and a grey light consumed the weak and feeble green **then I will help you **the grey light subsided, and it left in its wake a new green. It was bold and bright, flowing and powerful. It was perfect. The green flowed down and across her, consuming her. They rushed over to the other colours and danced. The other colours danced around it and swirled in perfect harmony. It was perfect. Perfect._

_Perfect._

Her eyes slowly fluttered open, she had just had the weirdest dream about colours of all things. She slowly rolled over to hit her alarm clock, but she only hit solid ground. Memories started to flow freely back into her, and she began to curl up into herself, she wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, she wanted to go home. She wiped the tears that had begun to gather in her eyes and sat up, the room she was now trapped in was made purely of metal. It was a decent size, almost double the size of her bedroom, and there was a florescent light above her head.

A groan came from the opposite side of the room, she slowly turned her head to see what was there; she may already know the answer, but she wanted to confirm her fate. Across from her was a boy around her age and body type, he had slick brown hair and pale face covered in sweat. He rose a hand to his head and winced, his eyes than widened and his head swung around the room. His eyes landed on her and he bolted to his feet, he looked at her up and down before a sigh of relief came from his lips. He opened his mouth as to speak but was interrupted by the sound of an intercom system.

"Hello potential agents, it is nice to speak with you" a monotone voice rang through the room, "welcome to your assessment," the boy looked all around for the source of the noise, but that wasn't what she was focusing on, _'... then you'll wake up in a decently large room with someone else, you'll then be told to kill the other person,' _those were Izuku's exact words and so far he had been right about everything. She was going to have to kill the boy over there, who was currently yelling at the disembodied voice. "Be quiet brat! I was going to ease you into this as by protocol but fuck it. Kill each other or you'll starve to death in there!".

The boys yelling increased in both intensity and volume, screaming that no matter what they did that he would never stoop as low as them. She was going to join him in the yelling when she remembered Izuku's last piece of advice _'You have bombs implanted into your wrists and ankles, so do everything the guards tell you, okay!'_, he had sounded so desperate, like he actually cared. She looked at the boy and contemplated who was worth more, her or him. Well she didn't have to think twice, she was more important to her family and that was all she cared about.

She breathed out and in, trying to focus, she summoned her quirk to the palms of her hands. She was expecting the weak dull green that she was used to, but she was greeted with the brilliant green of her dream. It flowed freely in her hands hopping from one to the other, flowing like water but floating like vapour. She then grabbed hold of it, it grew rigid and grew and shrank to her will not its own. It then grew longer bulging in her hand and slimming when not, soon it formed what looked like a sword. She swung it back and forwards watching the faint glow it left in its wake, like a glow stick in a dark room.

She summoned a second and turned to the boy, he was staring at her bug eyed, "okay, you know we don't need to do what he says, let's just wait for the heroes to come... okay?" no heroes were coming, they hadn't for Izuku nor for the person who was turned to that monster. They were on their own, kill or be killed. She ran towards him as fast as she could. She tried to use her newly made blades to slash him across his chest, but he activated his own quirk before she could. She felt her blades slice along a rough surface, when she looked, she saw that the boy had turned his chest to stone.

She jumped backwards hoping to get away, only to trip over her own feet and fall on her but. She sent another bit of her quirk behind her, she then made it smash her in the back at ridiculous speeds. She felt the impact against her back but no pain as her quirk couldn't harm her, the momentum she gained pushed her up and to her feet, she looked over to the boy to see him looking down at his now stone arms in amazement. His quirk was likely to have gotten an upgrade to, she fell into an improvised fighting stance and waited for the boy to make the first move.

He looked her up and down after his own inspection of himself, he gulped and fell into his own stance. He made the first move, opting for a straight charge, he swung his arm to punch her in the face; _'though, it could be difficult if they are stronger than you so be tricky,' _she took that piece of advice to its fullest as she ducked under the strike and stepped past him while swinging her sword into his stomach. She thanked god that her mother had made her take basic self-defence courses so that she wasn't a complete idiot while in a fight, sensei had even let them use the practise swords once and that little practise had her the slightest bit less shit at using a sword.

She knew straight away that the blow hadn't hit from the rough surface that the sword was met with, she crouched low and extended her leg while twisting herself in place. A classic leg sweep. The boy fell to the ground with a thud, she sprung to her feet before placing a foot on the boys chest and aiming her sword on his jugular. She was about to stab through the boy as Izuku's words came to her once again '_if you fail, you'll be turned into one of those' _she couldn't imagine the pain that the transformation from human to whatever those things where was but she imagined it would be horrifying.

The boy took advantage of her lack of attention and socked her in the stomach, she was launched to the side. The boy clambered over to her and straddled her by the waist before he started to bunch her in the face, over and over and over and over again. She felt teeth dislodge and shatter and her jaw start to crack, in her desperation she slammed her hand on the ground while using her quirk making a pillar of green come from the ground and slam the boy off of her and into the wall. All sympathy was gone as she stretched both arms out towards him and let as much power as her body would allow spill from her.

Normally the sight of green pillars sprouting from the air and smashing into a boy stuck into a wall until he was battered and bruised would have made her chuck up her guts, but she was to angry, to desperate, to _scared_. By the time that she stopped the boy was long dead, his body stuck in the wall with some of his body parts turned to a fine red paste. This time she did through up, over and over. She had killed him, brutally and with no remorse; she fell to her knees, her legs going slick with vomit and blood. "well done agent 9036, welcome to The Warehouse,"

She felt something prick her in the neck, when she grabbed onto it and pulled it out from under her skin, she saw that it was a dart. A drowsiness came over her body that she had become unwelcomely familiar with. She stumbled to her feet and walked over to the far wall; she sent a pillar of green crashing into the wall leaving a sizeable dent. She did it again and again but no matter how many times she smashed into it; it wouldn't budge. She fell to her knees and then to her side, the last thing she saw before she fell into unconsciousness was the corpse of the boy staring back at her.

* * *

Once again, she found herself waking up in an unfamiliar situation, she tried to get up from whatever position she was in before quickly realising that she was tied down. She opened her eyes as a light was shone into her face "Hey, doc," the woman who had moved the light into her face called out, she wore a doctors outfit along with a rubber face mask and rubber gloves. But what unnerved her was the surgeons light she wore on her head, "she's awake," she seemed to have a voice that sounded rather friendly on the surface but when you dig into it you find that it was all a façade.

A man came into her field of view, he was wearing the same thing as the female 'doctor', he looked her in the face "Perfect, call the other two in, there probably arguing in the other room," the woman nodded and left her field of view. "Now, now, aren't you a fine specimen. Now how does your quirk work," he was poking her with a pen, he bit his bottom lip and wrote something on a piece of paper the was out of her field of view. She looked around again, more desperately this time but still getting blinded by the florescent light.

"W-whats going on," the man glanced at her a second before going back to taking notes "what are y-you going to do to me," the man looked at her again but deiced that she was not worth his time by looking back at his notes. He sighed through his nose and rubbed his chin in thought, he glanced back at the notes before the sound of turning pages were heard to her side. He looked back down at her to find her still glaring at him, he sighed again.

"Your quirk is a perfect base line," he said offhandedly "it showed a lot more response to the booster drug than most other quirks and showed that it has capabilities in mid, long and close range combat. But all of them could be improved, you aren't the perfect agent yet. No, only the perfect baseline, you are too weak to wield it at its full potential while your personality blocks you from tapping into its true power and your one dimensional mind limits its creative abilities," He smiled as he wrote down more notes, "we can't really help with the last two, but the first is really easy. Just do a quick fix up and you're done,"

She heard the sound of a door slamming open and two people arguing, soon after two more doctors came into her field of view. Both males and both looked to be the exact opposite of the other, one looked really happy with a smile being able to be seen through hi surgeons mask. The other had a notable frown through his mask, one had dark hair the other had light, one was pale one dark skinned and both radiated loathing for the other.

"But either way, let's stop with the faffing around and let's get down to business," the man taking notes said as he reached above her head and grabbed something from what sounded like a metal tray, he then passed it to the woman from before that was now to her left, she slowly lifted up her disgusting gown until her stomach was full shown. The woman then lowered the now revealed scalpel to her skin and attempted to make an incision, only stopping when Hiniko started to squirm against the pain. The woman gave her a sideways glance before taking the scalpel away from her skin.

"Oh, I knew we were forgetting something," the happy looking male said as he reached above her head to the aforementioned tray and pulling a syringe from it. "The muscle relaxing agent," He then plunged the thing into her wrist and squeezed the plunger, bit by bit she felt her muscles stop moving and completely relax. But she still felt the pain of the newly opened wound the woman had opened. Realisation dawned on her, they weren't looking to dampen the pain, no they just didn't want her to squirm. One of Izuku's more off handed warnings came to mind.

_'...well unless you get the attention of the doctors. But other than that, all you have to do is focus on winning and then you'll be alright,'_ this was her fault, she should have been more careful. She felt the scalpel pierce her skin; she swore that tears would burst from her eyes but even her tear ducts weren't working. It was her fault, that became a mantra as the 'surgery' carried on, parts of her insides were grabbed, cut out and replaced. She felt as if she would pass out from all the pain, but her mind prevented her from an out of this torture.

She wanted someone, anyone, to save her. It hurt more than it could be described with words, she felt more of her muscle be yanked out and replaced with god knows what. Pain was everything, nothing seemed to matter as much as getting away from the indescribable pain. A hero, that is what she needed: Ingenium, thirteen, Edgeshot, All Might, Endeavour, Anyone

But in The Warehouse, there are no heroes.


	3. Flesh wound

** ...**

* * *

**Chapter Three: Flesh wound**

* * *

**...**

* * *

He has been patrolling all night and there had been no sign of Ground Zero, he let a long and heavy sigh escape through his lips as he leaped from building to building using his capture weapon to help him. He has been brought onto the Ground Zero case by Detective Naomusa Tsukauchi, he was one of Japans most successful investigators and had solved more cases for the Musutafu PD than the combined work of all the Detectives across Japan, with him even having connections to All Might of all people. So imagine his surprise when he called him for help with a case, he had been asked to come along to one of his raids and drug busts but never to help him in investigation.

Sure he was well know for his fluency on the tracking and capturing of vigilantes, but when Naomusa had contacted him back then, he already had all the information needed to make the arrest. Though even then a few vigilantes like The Crawler and Pop-Step are still active, but that is besides the point. When he arrived at the station he was ushered to Naomusa's office by the receptionist before she hurried off to get back to her job, he knocked on the door and waited for a response. Once he got one he opened the door and entered, he faltered before taking a double take. The room was clean, no scattered files or mountains of coffee cups in sight.

He gazed at the Detective to see that he was at his desk calmly skimming through a few files before he took a relaxed sip of his coffee, that immediately sent alarm bells blaring in his mind. Whenever he had encountered the Detective whenever he was going through files he always had an edge to him, like he was carefully dissecting a corpse in the hopes for any clue on how they died. He slowly walked into the room before silently taking the seat in front of the Detective, he took a closer look at him and noticed some things he hadn't the first time around.

His hand were trembling, his cloths were messy, his hair looked like it hadn't seen a shower in weeks and his eyes were underlined by eye bags that could rival his own. The Detective closed the file he was reading and leaned back in his chair to reach the filing cabinet before placing it back in its rightful place. He then opened his desk drawer and pulled out a Nine centimetre file out of it, he quirked an eye brow up before looking between the Detective and the file. If that file, what he assumed to be, the Ground Zero case file then he should have been able to catch them five times over by now.

"Hello Eraserhead, I am glad you could make it," The Detective said, he new it was just a pleasantry but he nodded his head in acknowledgement anyway "as you know, I asked you to come here to assists me with the Ground Zero case that I was assigned a year ago. This file contains all the information we have on him," He slid the file across the desk and to him, he didn't understand why the time he was assigned the case mattered but he filed the thought away and carried on with his job. He took it into his hands and flipped it open, It was rather basic with the time he started vigilantism with gender and appearance listed near the top, with several witness testimonies near bottom.

He turned the page expecting more information only to be greeted by a long list of locations and names along with a long lists of crimes listed next to them, he looked back up the Detective in confusion. That page was a list of the vigilantes take downs, with the crimes listed being the ones he prevented, he carried flipping looking for the rest of the information. There had to have been a mistake here, maybe the Detective accidentally separated the two pages of information and lost it in the long stack of take downs; those thoughts were cut off by him flipping to the last page.

He placed his across one and other before staring at the Detective incredulously, he had know Naomusa for over six years and in that time he had never made this big of a filling error. Now there where two answers to this conundrum; either, this was the only information he had and hadn't been able to find any more than the basics over the year he spent on the case; or, he had some how managed to loose the rest of the information somehow and was not telling him about for some reason. From the look on the Detectives face coupled with occam's razor it seemed it was obviously the former.

He placed the file back on the desk and looked at the Detective with a raised brow, he took the file back and slid it back into one of his many desk drawers. He lent forward, placing is head into his hands with his elbows braised on his desk, "Now I see why you want me to help you with investigations, that was... not your best work," the detective sighed audibly while he took his head from his hands, he look even more exhausted than before with his pale skin making his eye bags look like bruises. "Are you getting enough sleep, you look exhausted,"

The Detective looked at him with a brow raised high as he let out a dry laugh as if he told a bad joke "that's rich coming from you,". He does suppose he was slightly sleep deprived, but he was used to the near constant state of of pain while the Detective, quite simply, wasn't. "Either way, you're right, I have next to no information on this fucker and I need your help," no that also took him off guard, the Detective basically never sworn in his entire relationship with him. "you are the only person I know with the expertise to find him,".

"And why do you think that I would fair any better than anyone of your team at finding him. Sure I've caught vigilantes before but they were limelight vigilantes, from what it looks like to me Ground Zero operates underground," the Detectives nodded in understanding, he held his hand to his chin in concentration "sure it says he had only ever operated in Musutafu, but it's a fairly big city. Fore christ sake even U.A is here," the detective looked like he was going to going to pop a blood vessel with how much he was concentrating.

He snapped his fingers as his face light up as if had found the answer to string theory "How about you move to Musutafu," he rolled his eyes and gave him a sarcastic glare to cement how much of a stupid idea it was. "Not permanently, just think about it, if you move your patrol over here than you would have a chance to run into him and wouldn't it be a little more _logical_ for you to move closer to your day job," he felt his eye twitch on that last one, god he hated it when he was right. If this entire case was going to be as headache inducing as this than he swore to god he would go and punch All Might in the nuts.

He sighed as he rubbed his eyes "Fine, I'll go find myself a hotel," he thanked god he hadn't bought any cats like he had been tempted to do over the years, they would not live a week if he asked either Yamada or Nemuri to keep an eye on them. He stood from his seat and made his way over to the door before he turned back to the Detective "but you owe me one," the Detective wore a small smile on his face as he halfheartedly waved him out of his office. He ground under his breath, he left the office and left the police station. Now for him to find a place to sleep.

He shuck himself out of the memory and focused on jumping from roof to roof, to be honest this whole thing had been one minor inconvenience after the other. He looked down another alley looking for trouble but finding none, one of the biggest of them was him having to change his patrol route. Normally he changes his root every week to make sure that nobody tried to pull anything, but now he had to map the entire city inside his head from scratch, he hadn't done that for seven years. He raised his hand to his head, another migraine had reared its ugly head.

To be honest migraines where the worst, in a fight against a villain he could at least said he tried, with a migraine is pop a pill and hope for the best. He didn't do a good job at preventing them , he takes a bullet train filled with noisy people to work where he then works around loud kids. Then he gets into break where he gets harassed by Yamada who was basically a bigger version of the aforementioned children, after that he went to patrol where he stops rapists and murders until the sun comes up. Not the most migraine friendly lifestyle now was it.

He was cut out of his mental complaining by a cry from a couple roofs down, he ran over to the sound and looked down into the alleyway and saw a woman pinning a man to a wall with a kitchen knife. It looks to have been bought locally instead of by a big shopping brand, so it should be a lot easier to break the blade if needed; she also had a deranged look in her eyes, one he had only seen in murders and rapists. He prepared himself to drop down and stop her but was stopped by a quite thud a little farther down the alley only to see a figure who looks to have just jumped from the fire escape.

After looking him up and down he realised something, that was Ground Zero, full camo cargo pants and hoodie pared with a white half face mask that covered everything except his chin and scowling mouth. He stared down to the alley getting himself ready to jump down once he is done with the murder, his job was to investigate not capture on sight, it would be safer if he could analyse his fighting style from a distance so he could more easily capture him. Ground Zero carried on walking down the alley until he reached the murderer and her victim. He coughed into his hand to get their attention, the second the murderer looked he smashed a fist around the jaw.

He noticed the steam raising from Ground Zero's hand, he probably had a quirk that let him combust parts of his body and used it to speed up his punches. The murderer flew back and skid across the floor like a pebble on water. Ground Zero walked towards her, all the while ignoring the gaping victim, he started to tie up the murderer with an ease that comes from years of practise. Once he was satisfied enough with his work he told the victim to call the police and made his way a bit farther down the alley before placing both hands behind his back.

Eraserhead deiced that this was the best time to jump in, he activated his quirk before vaulting off the building. Ground Zero looked back at his hands in confusion before it a look of realisation came over him and looked up, what he saw was Aizawa falling down towards him as he sent his capture weapon out to hit him. He jumped to the side before the capture weapon could come into contact with him before landing in a dive roll away from him. Aizawa sent another strand of his capture weapon out to wrap up Ground Zero only for him to be dodged like the last.

It would be irrational to continue with simple long-ranged so he bit the bullet and engaged him in hand to hand combat, he made sure every move was quick and clean as Ground Zero was a combat vigilante and from what he had seen from interrogations and interviews it was clear he was talented in the craft. He sent a punch after kick at him in an effort to tire him down, from what he had seen it was obvious that he was self taught and because of this his moves -though effective- waste to much energy. All he had to do was tire him out enough and then wrap him up in his capture weapon.

A kick landed, smashing the vigilante around the face, he stumbled backwards and grunted in surprise. Once he regained his bearings a maniacal grin settled on his face as he suddenly charged at the underground hero; taken a little by surprise by the sudden change of strategy, he fell into a defensive stance. He had been blinking periodically throughout the fight and because of this he hadn't blinked for the last thirty seconds, he felt his dry eyes stutter close for less than a second. Ground Zero was a good few seconds away so he was confident that this was the time he should blink.

The seconded his eyes closed, an explosion thundered open a few meters in front of him before a smaller one was let off inches from his face. He snapped his eyes back open, he was greeted by a great stinging sensation and the same black his eyelids provided, he had felt this sensation many of times before. It was smoke, he jumped back and flung his capture weapon forward in the vague direction of his target; how the fuck had he manged to cross a seven meter gap in less than a second. He felt his capture weapon pull thought, for a split second he thought he got him, but than he felt himself lurch forward and an impact to the face.

He fell flat on his ass, "sorry about that, at least I made sure that this smoke wouldn't cause any permanent damage, last time I used this stuff I nearly blinded myself" that was a strange way to phrase that, he made it sound like he prepared the smoke earlier; perhaps he made smoke bombs, not that much of a stretch. He stumbled to his feet and wiped his eyes to make it easier to see, he was able to make out the vague smudge of colour that was Ground Zero, "well, if you don't mind, I'll be making a leave." he sent another wave of his capture weapon towards his opponent, only for it to be swatted away.

He watched on as the now more clear Ground Zero started to climb up the walls, he snapped his head towards the civilian and called out in an authoritative voice "Call the police, they'll be hear soon if you call now," he then sent he binding cloth up and onto the rail of the building above before pulling himself all the way up to the rooftop. He looked over the top of the buildings, only to be met by the retreating form of Ground Zero a couple buildings down, he swore under his breath. He began to chase after him, it looked like they were going at the same pace or perhaps Ground Zero was going faster.

He saw Ground Zero look over his shoulder, and with his now perfectly clear vision, he saw a sadistic grin grow across the vigilantes mouth before he let out a howl of manic laughter. He cursed under his breath, he tried to throw out his capture weapon after him, only for it to return to him covered in burns; he grimaced as he brought out his flip phone from his pocket and dialed Naomusa without taking his eyes from the vigilante that was running from him. He held his phone to his ear and let it dial and after one or two rings Naomusa picked up the phone, he didn't let him speak.

"I hate you,"he stated into the devise, he heard a snort of amusement from the other end of the line. His frown deepens as his free hands nails dug into his flesh to the point started to drip from his hand and to the concrete of the rooftops, it would be strange to the next person who comes up to their rooftop to see a trail of blood that goes across roof after roof. "I hate you with every fiber of my being, when you die I will piss on your grave," normally he was a pretty restrained person who rarely ever swore, but he honestly didn't give enough of a shit about that anymore.

The snort of laughter turned to giggles and then finally to maniacal laughter, he heard the sound of Naomusa hitting his desk and him wheeze. This was extremely out of character for Naomusa, but he guessed the fact he hadn't slept for more than twenty-four hours may have had something to do with it and he knew that could take a lot out of people. "Good luck, have fun not sleeping for the next few years," at that exact moment was when he decided he was going to punch the Detective around the jaw so hard that his mouth would enter a room five minutes before him. This was going to be long and painful, he was already questioning all of his life choices, this was going to kill him.

* * *

**...**

* * *

He felt his eyes flutter open, he felt a smile force it's way to his face. He had been being chased by Eraserhead for the past few week and it was the most hilarious thing he had ever seen in his entire life, maybe it was the constantly growing look of frustration on his face each time they encounter or perhaps it was the quite curses he mumbles under his breath. He shook the thoughts from his head, he needn't look at the calendar to know what day it was; he had set his alarm clock for two hour earlier than usual, he sat up in bed a ripped the duvet from his body.

He swung his legs over and off his bed before standing up and going over to his wardrobe, he stripped out of his pajamas and into something more casual before making his way over to his bed side table. He lifted the lamp from the bedside table to reveal two hair clips he had stolen from his mothers room; from there he went to the door and got to work, only spending a second or two before fully picking the lock. He pushed the door open and made his way into the hallway, then to the kitchen. He went over to the fridge and opened it toe reveal everything he needed.

He got to work, it was something he had practised making since he was seven so he was exceptional at cooking it, it would take him around an hour to finish making it and then from there he would be able to use it and then get back to bed as if nothing had happened with a few minutes to spare. He cooked the meal flawlessly and started to pour it into the bento box he had prepared earlier, after he clicked the lid on the dish and he had finished putting the kitchen back to how it was before, he made his way back to his room.

Locking his door behind him, he placed everything against the ground to make sure that when he took the window off that nothing would get blown down to alert his parents. He went over to his PCs power unit and took the screw driver from its hiding place, then he went to the window and took the glass off and lay it flat against the ground. He hoped out onto the fire escape, he started to jog the flights of stares until he reached the third floor were he leapt off and landed in a barrel roll in the alley bellow. From there he made his way to the street and down to a certain part of town.

The day was July fifteenth, Izuku's eleventh birthday, and he was heading over to the cemetery were he was 'buried'. The box of Katsudon weighed heavy in his hands, it was Izuku's favourite food; he was afraid that this wasn't the way he liked it as he had just taken a recipe from the internet, but he didn't really want to ask Inko for obvious reasons. He felt something wet fall and hit his head, he looked up and saw darkened clouds stretch to the horizon, it seemed appropriate for it to be raining at a time like this, much more so than last year which had been unbearably hot.

He turned the last corner of his short journey and the cemetery was in site, it had black rusted gates that were open twenty-four seven, he walked through them and came upon the rows of graves. He walked past them, occasionally glancing to the names engraved on them until he came upon the one he was looking for, the grave of his best friend. He sat down cross legged in front of the grave and placed the bento box onto the over turned dirt before taking off the lid. He sat there for a few seconds just looking at the grave.

It was the 'final resting place' for Izuku. He looked at the piece stone, he knew that this was not where his friend was, there was nothing in the casket in the ground. He had often wondered why he did this to himself but he had stopped caring about that for a while now. He looked around, the grass was green and there where sakura trees nearby that rained down petals over the graves to make a nice aesthetic for the visitors. He scoffed, he didn't care where this grave stone was, it was fake so it could be at the top of Everest for all her cares.

It was an underwhelming grave stone, with it reading _'Izuku Midoriya, gone to soon, 2321-2328' _and that was it, that was not deserving of a person of like Izuku. "I don't know why I do this, you're not dead," he brushed his hand through his hair and looked away, he wasn't sure if Izuku would appreciate him visiting his 'grave', but this was more for his closure. "I made your favourite, as usual, I think I've gotten better at making it but I'm not quite sure," he got no response, yet he wasn't expecting one, he wasn't here but somewhere else.

"I wonder how your doing, probably not great, but I hope that the bastards that took you treat you well," silence, he missed him. Sure he hadn't seen him for five years but that didn't matter to him. He was his best friend and he would not give up until he finds him and he can get back to living a normal life, he felt tears start to run down his face, he hadn't seen him for so long. He remembered his great smile that blinded almost anyone who saw it and that annoying but strangely cute way he would mumble off facts under his breath or that he would refuse to go anywhere without one of his favourite All Might toys.

He brought his knees to his face, "I miss you," he always said that, he didn't know why but he felt like he needed to. He felt the tears that ran down his face be washed away by the rain. It was getting to the time he should go back home yet he didn't want to move, so he didn't, he sat in the rain for a while. He found it amusing that he couldn't even get out a few sentences before he started to breaking down, after a few minutes he got back to his feet and left. He made sure he took the bento with him before he chucked the katsudon in the bin.

He slowly made his way home in the rain, his hair sagging over his eyes and his cloths clinging to his frame. It was a short visit, but every one so far had been so no surprise there, he slowly walked through street after street; his mind wasn't with him, no, it was immersed in happy memories he had shared with Izu back when they were kids. He felt something tug at his shirt, yet he ignored it, he didn't care, well that was until he felt a familiar pain in his side. He lashed out using his quirk, a small explosion went off and knocked his assailant away from him.

He had just been stabbed, he reached to his side and pulled out the knife, he could do the stitches when he got home. He looked around and realised he had been yanked into an alley way before looking for his assailant only to see a dark figure further in the alley, shrouded in the rain. He cursed under his breath, he was at a major disadvantage, he didn't know his opponents quirk or how many more blades they had and coupled with that the rain was diluting his sweat. He raised both his hands in front of himself in a fighting stance, it looked like he was going to have to resort to his good old friend fist to cuffs. His opponent charged at him.

They pulled another knife out at the last second and tried to slash him, he ducked under the attack and slammed an explosion fueled punch right into the assailant chest sending them flying back and to the floor. They slowly got back up to their feet, they looked like they weren't used to resistance, well he was going to take that opportunity. He charged forward and smashed his foot into their stomach launching them farther back into the alley, he was going to go and finish the job but then they span around and looked back up at him.

He looked down on the newly revealed girl and frowned, their was a familiar look in her eyes, it made him want to laugh. To the untrained eye it would have looked like a look of fear, but he knew better, he had seen this look before by many of the serial killers he had beet as Ground Zero. It was a trap, if a normal person had this happen to them they would assume that she didn't want to attack people and did it for necessity and go to help her, then they would be murdered. But he wasn't a normal person, he placed both hands in front of him.

"Nice try," he let out as big of an explosion as he could manage, the blast easily consumed the now wide eyed killer and blasted her into the alley and out of sight with a cry. He rubbed his wrists, they had a small dull ache in them from the blast, his attention was immediately overhauled to his side were he clutched his wound. Rain water was now pouring into the wound, he had to make it home and quick so he could stitch the wound up before it could get infected. He stumbled out of the alley way and started to limp home, blood trickled through his fingers and stained his cloths. His vision was getting blurry.

He made it to his apartment complex and went for the fire escape in the side alley next to it, he reached up to the ladder that led to the first floor. He felt his wound stretch which caused him to let out a cry of pain. He tried again only to get a similar result, his body gave way and he fell against the alley wall, he couldn't climb normally and he was not going to even try to use his quirk to propel himself up. He was going to die like this, in a back alley nowhere closer to finding Izu as he was at the beginning.

He stumbled back to his feet, he refused to let this be the end of him. No, he had to find Izu and to do that he needed to be alive, he needed to focus on the here and now and and find a way out of dying without worrying about the long term consequences. An idea flashed into his mind and he clutched onto it, Aunt Inko, he staggered out of the alley and over to the apartment complex over from his, he swung the door open and staggered in. He then made his way to the stair well and started to walk up it, he need to go up to the seventh floor.

He was basically dragging himself at this point, he felt the wound throb, he knew he would start to leave a trail of blood if it didn't do anything about the bleeding and that would be rather disturbing to anyone who walked by it. He ripped off his t-shirt and tied it around his side, temporarily quenching the bleeding, he carried on stumbling up the stairs, he had reached the second floor and he was in agonising pain. He soldiered on and carried on his journey up the stairs. He need to get to his destination or he would die, this was literal life or death

He was on the third floor now and he had started to see spots in his vision, carrying his own weight felt like pushing a bus while stepping on hot coals. He still couldn't give up though. Fourth floor, he could hear his heart beating in his ears and the air entering his lungs; images of Izuku bouncing around with a smile on his face as he wore the all might onesie he had got him, that he had refused to take off for a subsequent week flashed through his head. yeah he couldn't let himself die just yet, he still needed to save him, no matter what.

Fifth floor and he was half sure that one of his legs had started to given up on him, but still he limped up and up the stairs. He let his eyes flutter close, he didn't need to worry about seeing as he had already counted the steps on each flight. Sixth floor and he was hunched against the landing, he had fallen and his body refused to get back up, he tried to force his legs to move but they refused. But his arms could still drag him, he opened his eyes and glared at the stairs in front of him. He reached his arm forward and pulled.

He was on the seventh floor, but he refused to stop moving. He grabbed a hold of the stairwell railing before hoisting himself up and to his feet, he then stumbled to the door that led to the apartments. He hauled his way through the door and through the hallway, his shoulder sliding across the wall in a feeble attempt to stay on his feet which while making sure blood didn't get everywhere, he reached the door to Aunt Inko's apartment and slammed his hand across the hard wood. He hoped to all hope that she was still awake, she normally was but he hoped that she hadn't collapsed.

As he waited for Inko his vision started to go black and the bird songs outside began to sound as if they were underwater. He tried his best to cling to consciousness, thinking of anything that could distract him from his failing body; his nights as Ground Zero, his Mothers and Fathers worry, Izuku. He couldn't hold on any longer, he felt all felling fall from his body and his sight get robbed from him, the last sensation he had before falling into darkness was the sound of Inko's apartment door opening and the sound of a loud gasp.

* * *

Pain, that was the first thing he felt upon waking. He tried to open his eyes only to find that they felt as if they were glued closed, he rose a hand to his head to try and stem a gradually growing migraine. He tried to focus, to ground himself, the last thing he can remember was getting dragged into an alley and being stabbed; he tried to think past then, but everything seemed fuzzy, as if it were cloudy and unfocused. He could remember pain and desperation, then nothing, he sat up from whatever position he was in and once again tried to open his eyes.

This time they complied, everything was fuzzy and melded into one and other making everything one giant blur of colour, he rubbed his eyes in the hopes of gaining some kind of clarity. Everything became less blurry, he was able to make out vague shapes yet still nothing was coming to him. He tried his best to make heads or tales of situation. He started off with what he was lying on, it was soft for one, and their was defiantly a pillow under him and a blanket draped over his body. Well that seemed to be a bed then, pretty obvious.

He pulled the duvet off of him and swung hiss legs up and over the edge of the bed, he looked around the room in looks of something else he could make sense of. He looked to the left of him and saw a smudge of white in his vision, he approached it, he got to his feet and intended to go and investigate before he felt tremendous amounts of pain flare from his side. He looked down and saw that one, he wasn't wearing a t-shirt and two, that he had bandages wrapped around the place were he had gotten stabbed. Well that's what he assumed the winding cloth around his stomach was.

He staggered to the smudge of white, clutching his side all the way, the smudge got clearer as he got closer as he approached and it revealed itself to be a table and chair. Upon farther inspection he found a stack of notebooks and a pot of pencils on the left side of the table and a night light on the right, a desk then. He picked up one of the notebooks and flipped through it, what he was expecting was something filled with notes on either school work or maybe on a job, what he wasn't expecting was all of them to be completely empty. He check the others and they were the same, how strange.

He looked around the room and saw that there was only one thing left, he didn't need to go over to know what it was though as his eyes had finally agreed to cooperate with him and actually do their job. It was a wardrobe that had one of the doors open, it was filled with basic clothing; white t-shirt, black trousers and some other ordinary looking items. He walked over to it and pulled out a white t-shirt and pulled it over his body, he looked back over the room and immediately knew were he was. He had been the one who had made most of this room after all.

He was in Aunt Inko's guest room, he wanted to slap himself, he should have realised sooner. He walked over to the door, feeling his bare feet press comfortably against the soft carpet. He twisted the handle and pulled it open revealing the barren hallway, he stepped out and into it before taking a hard right towards the living room. It would only be polite to tell her that he was leaving before doing so. He stepped in and looked around, he saw the back of Inko's head as she watched the television, it was currently on the weather, apparently it was going to rain for the next few days, hooray.

He debated on leaving without telling her, he then remembered that her son disappeared without a trace and decided that was a bad idea. But then what the hell should he do, he can't just go 'can we forget that this ever happened' and fuck off into the night. He should try and manipulate her and make her feel sorry for him, another hard no, not only would that be wrong to do to aunt Inko but she had always been able to seen through his bullshit. He sighed and settled on just winging it, what else could he do, no manipulating Inko.

He limped over to the chair that sat next to the coach, he didn't want to get to close, he was planning on leaving as soon as possible a didn't want to explain why he had shown up to her apartment with a stab wound. "Hey," simple conversation starter, Inko flinched back in surprise before snapping her head to look at him. It made seance why she would be surprised, a normal person would have been crying about how much pain they were suffering through but, as he said before, he wasn't a normal person. "I need to get going, I just needed to let you know I'm fine,"

He saw that she was going to try and contest him, so he stood up and walked towards the hallway, he could hear that she scurried after him but that really didn't matter. He needed to get home before his parents check in his room, luckily for him it was a weekend and that they leave him alone most of the time and only checked on him at midday. He saw the time on the television and it said it was half past eleven. He walked to the door and twisted the door handle and heard it click open, he was about to open the door when Inko spoke up from behind him.

"You do know that I have your parents number," he stopped in his tracks, he knew exactly what was going on now, she wanted answers and wouldn't let him go without knowing them all. He let go of the door handle and slowly turned to look at her, she was standing their, hands on her hips as she looked at him with a disappointing look in her eyes, she raised her arms and pointed to the living room. He complied to the unspoken order and walked past her and to the living room and sat back in the chair.

Inko entered after him and went through to the kitchen, he could hear some clinking glasses and the sound of the kettle boiling, he used this valuable time to think of something to tell Inko to make sure that his parents don't find out that he had been stabbed. He could just tell her the truth, there wasn't anything that incriminating to that, he went to Izu's grave to mourn and got mugged on the way home. Nothing about that screamed vigilante did it, maybe she could ask how he managed to take down the killer, but he could just make something up.

She comes back through with a tray, two cups and a tea pot, she lay it down on the coffee table before she poured tea into both glasses. He courteously took his glass and had a sip "Your'e Ground Zero, aren't you," and not so courteously sprayed it out of his mouth. He coughed a few times before grabbing a tea towel that was neatly folded on the coffee table and started to scrub up all the sprayed tea. "I'm going to take that as a yes," Inko said just loud enough for him to hear before she took a sip of her tea.

"I-I yo-yo, no I'm not, you a-are mistaken," she looked at him with a brow raised, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone before she started to type on the key pad and brought it up to her ear. "No stop, don't call them. Fine, okay, it's me you got me. Just don't call them," He cried out, no, begged for her to stop. She let out a snicker before taking the phone from her ear and hitting the hang up button, he let out a sigh of relief as she slipped her phone back into her pocket.

They both stared at each other for a while before she spoke up "I saw you on the news two years ago, I would know a quirk like yours when I see it," that made sense, his quirk was rather unique, not only are sweat quirks rather rare but the same can be said about explosion quirks. Sure fire quirks are common, but fire is different to explosions, even if they look vaguely similar at a distance. "I also saw the smile you had on your face, when I saw that I knew it was you. You are your mothers son after all,"

That made him chuckle. "Yeah, your right. Hopefully the police can't find out as easily though," the room descended into silence, he really didn't know what to do from here, what is it that she wanted. "Sorry that I had to come in unannounced like that, but I really couldn't go home then," she raised a brow, she wanted more information than that, probably not about the stabbing but why he didn't go to his house. "My parents put me on permanent house arrest. I couldn't just waltz in through the front door, nevermind after being outright stabbed like this,".

She nodded in understanding, before she looked back up at him, her look had hardened "So, I want you to tell me why I shouldn't tell your parents about you late night pass time," she sent a shiver down his spine, the way she looked like in that moment felt like she was going to eat him whole "nevermind the fact that you got stabbed," he flinched back at that, if his parents found out then he would get gutted and hung up on the streets. He couldn't let them find out, he was getting closer to the truth about Izu but he needed time.

"I can find him," it was a simple sentence but it meant everything to him, it was his belief, his worth, it was why he was willing to put his life on the line daily all because he could and would find him. "I just need time and I'll find him and I'll bring him back," she starred at him, a frown spread across her face. She sighed to herself before standing from her seat, he followed suit and stood. She looked at him with pity in her eyes before she pointed towards the doorway. He didn't understand what she meant, what did she want.

"Your'e wrong, he's dead and there isn't any way to get him back," she had a bitter look on her face and a disappointing glint in her eyes, he was about to retort when she interrupted him again "just go, I won't tell your parents," he starred at her before leaving to the front door, she was wrong, everyone was wrong. He was alive an he knew it. As he left he felt his stab wound throb, he wasn't sure how he was going to get back to his room but he would find a way. He was going to because he needed to if he was going to find Izu and that was that.

He hobbled down the stairs and to the lobby, he then crossed the street and reached the fire escape to his house. He grabbed for the ladder to the first floor and after a few attempts he got what he wanted, he dragged his way up the ladder before he started his assent up the stair cases. He clutched to his wound and winced, it was pretty bad but nothing more then a flesh wound so he should be able to get back to her night job in a couple of days. He got to his window after a few minutes of climbing, he vaulted through the window.

He put everything back to where it was supposed to go, before slumping into his chair. He typed through his passwords and other firewalls until he reached what he needed to get to, he started to skim through the quirk registry and police archives. The thing was about three year old at this point and he needed to get it updated by his 'friend' in america, he frowned. He looked through everything, missing person reports and petty crimes, anything could have a clue. He didn't know what he was looking for though and it was pissing him off.

He reached into his bag and started to absent mindedly right down theories based on what he already knew, he could recall the oddness of the missing window in Izukus room. He thought back to the night of Izu's disappearance, it was dark and stormy, the street lamp nearest to Inko's house was broken the night before. Izuku was scared of the dark so they kept the light on. How is all of that connected, how is it connected. Missing window, a storm were you cant see your own nose and a bright room. Visibility could be a factor... wait that made so much sense.

He remembered back to Inko's house back when he was cleaning Izu's room; _he walked out to the hallway, he was excited, he had just taken a picture of the broken window in Izuku's room and had a proper lead. He grabbed onto the window pain and brought it through to Izuku's room, he then went to the storage closet and looked through the stuff. There was a saw and a hammer and a pack of nails, but he didn't need any of them. He then spotted a tool kit, he opened it up only to see that one of the screwdriver slots where missing, upon double checking he saw that it was the one he needed. He huffed and took the second most suitable. _

Sight based teleportation, the kidnapper went onto the fire escape and looked into the well lit room and teleported into the house. After that they probably drugged Izu before attempting to leave, but because of how stormy it was they couldn't see, then thought of opening the window and climbing out but soon realises it locked because of how paranoid Inko was. They thought they couldn't just break to window out right so they when to the storage closet and took a screw driver, after that they left with the window pain, Izu and the screw driver.

He typed 'sight based teleportation' into the quirk registry and the police database , over a thousand different results came up, he briefly wondered how there was so many considering how rare tp quirks were but swated the pointless idea away. He sighed before he started to dig through the files for anything of note, he had become something of an expert of these sort of the things over the years and took almost twenty seconds to scroll through a page of information. But even with that it could take him a couple of days to find the right info, but he wouldn't let anything as mundane as a couple of days get in his way.

Izu was as good as home.

* * *

...

* * *

Her head lolled back and forth, she couldn't feel anything. Red hot pain was all she felt, no that wasn't the right description, it felt more like rats clawing under her skin. She sat there in her cage, surrounded by urine, rotten food and the blood of the dead, with nothing but pain. She couldn't think, everything was pain, no matter how long she waited or how hard she scratched and dug up her skin, it still didn't leave. She wanted to die, nothing was worth it anymore, she could still feel the scalpel running across her skin and her body being picked apart and put back together again, the feeling made her bite off one of her nails.

She remembered the boy she had murdered and couldn't help but feel jealous; she wanted, no, she needed the pain to stop. The look of pain on that boys face meant nothing, sure it would have hurt for awhile but it had ti have been better than this, anything was better than this. Her family came to mind. They would be glad to be rid of her, she had killed someone, none of them would have done that even if they were in the exact same situation as her. They had probably had seen this coming and be glad it wasn't around them.

She looked around, she needed to find something that could end the pain, her eyes landed on the monster. She looked it up and down, it was disgusting, but that didn't matter. It's skin was coming off to make way for it's grotesque muscle, that brought a smile to her face, it was obviously strong. It was perfect, "H-Hey," she called out to the beast, it didn't respond, so she called to it again. After what felt like hours, the beast finally looked in her direction; it stared at her with blank eyes, as if It didn't actually see her.

"Kill me," She cried out to the monster, it hadn't moved to react to her at all. "Please, you have to, it h-hurts so much," tears ran down her cheeks as she begged the monster to kill her, nut once again it responded with the same blank stare. She grabbed onto the bars of her cage and reached towards the monster, she begged it to do it, to end it, ye it gave her the same blank response. The monster looked away, going back to its original position before she had interrupted it. She cried out harder and longer until she felt like her throat gave way causing her to descended it loud sobs of grief.

She heard footsteps approaching, yet she didn't care, she had killed that boy in cold blood and she had payed her price by what happened to her by the hands of the 'doctors'; she deserved to die, she was less than human, the unfamiliar writhing underneath her skin hammered that point home. She heard the footsteps get closer and closer until they were only a couple of meters away, at this distance she realised that they were actually a pair of footsteps. Her head raised to look for the cause of the steps, she felt her neck crack and stretch as it moved but she chose to ignore it.

She was met with the sight of two 'guards' walking down the isle, they looked the same as the ones that had dragged her the 'assessment'; full camo, a helmet that covered the top half of their face, a hand gun strapped to their waist and a rifle held in their hands. She ignored them, they couldn't help her in her endeavor, she looked around with sunken eyes for something that could kill her, they landed on the rifle in the guards hands. She had an idea, she reached through the cage bars and grabbed onto one of the guards ankles.

"P-please," the guard looked down at her, a small frown was on their face, "P-please kill me," that took the guards by surprise, he recoiled away from her taking his ankle with him, he looked at her before raising his rifle. He was going to do it, finally she was going to be free, her body still rang with pain and her mind filled her head with images of the boy she murdered. She closed her eyes and waited, this was it, the end. Nothing could hurt her if she was gone, she was looking forward to it, heaven, hell, nothing at all, she didn't care.

"Wait," the other guard yelled before she heard the sound of metal hitting metal, upon opening her eyes she saw the other guard had used his rifle to smack the others away from killing her. "Look at her, you can see the way she's shaking or those scars on her arms, shes been to the doctor," the guard had hissed it out to the one that was about to kill her, they both looked at her before making there way back out the isle the opposite way they went in. She watched after them, tears quickly falling down her face and to the floor.

She wept into her hands, she was never going to get out of this nightmare, she was going to live out her days with nothing until she dies by the hand of another. She was useless... no, she refused, she was going to do what she wanted and she was going to go out her way not theirs. She turned her right hand wrist to herself and bit into her flesh, sure it hurt but it had nothing compared to the constant pain of the doctors. She ripped out more and more, if what Izuku said was right then there was a bomb somewhere in her wrist and if she was able to swallow that then she was set.

She chewed through more and more of her wrist, she saw the edges of her vision grow fuzzy and her tongue only picked up the taste of iron. She could now see the bone of her wrist, yet she had not encountered anything that could be considered a bomb; she opened her maw and bit down on her bone, the solid surface smashed against her teeth yet she carried on in the hopes to chip it away and get to the bomb. She could feel her heart beat shudder her body and saw the edge of her vision go black, yet she carried on gnawing through her bone.

Her body gave out on her and her jaw locked around her wrist, she still tried to chew but her body refused to listen to her command, as her vision started to go completely black she lay satisfied that the blood loss would probably be enough to die. From the little cognitive function she had left she could make out the sound of pounding footsteps coming from the right, she slowly turned her head to the noise but her failing sight couldn't make out what it was. She closed her eyes with a smile, whatever the sound was couldn't save her and that was good.

* * *

Her eyes slowly drifted open, she was greeted with the familiar glaring florescent lights of a hospital room along with the painfully writhing of her skin. She slowly sat up and looked around, it was the same as when she first woke up in this nightmare, par the living nightmare in the corner of the room. She stared forward. She was alive, her pulse constantly reminded her of that. She looked down on her right wrist and saw that it was now made entirely of scar tissue. She had failed, she was truly stuck, no escape. She cried into the palms of her hands, delirious tears running down her face and to her lap.

She felt a giggle escape her throat, she couldn't help it, it was funny. She tried to kill herself and had failed entirely, she was useless, absolutely useless. The giggling turned to chucking that then morphed to all out laughter. She was pathetic and deserved everything that was coming to her, she was going to die here and she deserved it for how useless she was; she was going to probably die by someone else's hand and they would be a hero for whipping her from the face of the planet. She was hopeless and useless, a waste of space.

She heard the door to the room open, she slowly turned her head towards the source of the noise and saw a pair of guards. She glared down the guards, the one on the right had a scar on his upper lip. Both the guards seemed unfazed by the display in front of them, perhaps they had seen things like this before hand, personally she didn't care. She dragged the sheets off of herself and swung her legs over the edge of the bed, she stood from her bed and made her way to the guards. They both kept their eyes locked on her.

She stopped just in front of them, she waited, they both grabbed her under the arms and dragged her through he door and into the winding corridors of the facility. Every once in a while a man or woman pass by them, they all wore lab coats and a majority of them carried clip boards. Along with that they pass by different kinds of doors, sometimes they where pristine oak doors like the ones in the infirmary, sometimes it would be a cruddy black plastic door, those ones often had nail marks leading into them along with puddles of blood leaking under the hinges

They then finally came to a familiar door, the one that led to the room she had been drugged in and then brought to the 'assessment'. The guards dragged her through and into the familiar room, plain walls with plain floor and ceiling along with a stack of hospital transport trolleys in the corner of the room. She was led to the door on the furthest right by one guard as the other went to grab a trolley from the stack of twelve. She waited for the other guard to come back with the trolley, when he did, she lay down on it without any complaints before she was rolled into the small room.

The purple gas hissed out of the vents she had seen last time, the moment the gas came into her system she felt the familiar fuzziness in the edge of her vision. Her limbs began to loose feeling and her heart started to beat more sluggish, she watched as images of the boy she had murdered flowed through her mind making the constant writhing under her skin to increase tenfold. Tears ran from her eyes, she was a monster, she should have died, it was only fair for what she had done. She felt her muscle completely relax and her vision go black.

She was a Monster.

A _monster._

_She looked at the green, it was flying around and playing with the other colours. Disgusting. She called over the green which flowed over to her, its beauty being displayed for everyone to see; she looked the green up and down and couldn't help but feel revulsion, she knew what it had done and how it had shrugged it of as if it was nothing. She felt the writhing under her skin, but it didn't hurt, no it felt warm and precious, a vessel, a conduit. She frowned and grabbed onto the green, it writhed and strained against her grip, begging her to let it go, she ignored its pleas._

_Grey flowed down her veins and into the green, but it wasn't enough. She called onto the writhing, no, the conduit and watched in awe as her skin turned a sickly black that reached into the green and clutched onto it. The green started to darken and stop its resisting, she felt the writhing leave as the green became more and more dark until it turned sickly and dead. She moved her hands and the green followed, flowing past her hands and the space between; she looked over to the other colours that were happily playing with one and other, disgusting._

_She sent out the green which blind sighted the brown, destroying it instantly. It went to the red next, it hardly put up a fight as it was blasted into thousands of pieces. The orange spiked out to damage the green, she made the green mold out and away from the orange that now spiked through the newly made hole in the green. It carried on like this, the orange striking while the green makes holes in itself to avoid its attacks. Once she was fairly certain that she new its attack pattern she sent out the green in a wave that completely obliterated the orange._

_The blue, that previously was frozen in __place, sprang away; it desperately tried to get out of the way of the green. She frowned, she moved her hands and watched as the green began to shrink into nothingness until it sprang back to life in front of the blue, it recoiled away from the green and tried to run again. But this time it was to slow, the green smothered over it before completely crushing it and letting it flood back to nothing. She summoned the green back to herself and it obeyed and rushed to her side, she reached her arm out and brought the green into herself._

_She was once again surrounded by meaningless black and it was beautiful._

_Beautiful._

She felt her eyes flicker open, she remembered the dream she just had clearly, it was strange but welcome in her breaking mind. She stood from her lying position and looked around the room, she was in a room that was made of metal par the floor which was made of sand. She looked to the opposite side of the room and saw another person, they were female and had long black hair and fell defined muscle spread across her body. That alone set her on her toes, she watched as she awoke and stumbled to her feet, she soon noticed her and frowned.

A voice rang through the room just like the one from the 'assessment', it sound a lot less crackly and more defined, like they had a bigger budget or something. "Welcome to the arena, to be honest I've never seen the mid tier version but I digress," she frowned, she didn't know nor care what the hell he was talking about, "okay, so you know the drill, kill each other or die. Off you go, I don't have all day," the voice sounded to chipper as he said that. They both looked at each other, she felt a tugging in her chest, it urged her to attack her, so she did.

She summoned a pillar of green towards the girl, just like last time, she was greeted by a green that she felt an odd amount of familiarity to even though it was different to what she expected. Just like in the dream it had turned into a sickly dark green that emulated pure power; she could also feel total control over it, last time she always felt a slight bit of resistance to whatever she did but now it felt like a second limb. The fact that she was able to summon a pillar so easily also surprised her, making swords had been like child's play, but the pillars always felt a little harder to make.

The girl met the attack head on and smashed her hand into the pillar, Hiniko elasticised the pillar making the girl launch herself backwards from her own power. She was shocked she could do that, normally it was hard to control the green after she had sent out, but now it was hers to freely manipulate. The girl flipped herself back onto her feet, she then charged back at Hiniko, in response she sent out an barrage of pillars along with a few spikes of green. The girl jump over the horde of attack, she pulled her fist back as she flew through the air before going to punch Hiniko in the face.

She summoned a shroud of green around her fist before barley grabbing onto the attack, a small shock wave went through the room that blasted the sandy floor to the edges. She was in a dead lock, the girl was on the attack and she need to find a way to turn the table, she already had an idea; she stepped to the side while letting go of the girls fist, all the while she summoned a pillar shooting up to her. The girl lurched forward with all the force of the attack being left to the open air, she was then met with a pillar of green to the stomach.

She was flung back and into the back wall, she left a small dent in her wake. The girl stood up, that brought a frown to her face, she sent out a wave of spikes next to the girl that ripped through her right arm, the girl cried out in pain before recoiling away from the attack. That gave her an idea, the girl charged at her with a pained look on her face, in response she formed a small layer of green over the girls bare feet. She pushed away from her causing the girls legs to shoot out from under her, she could hear her nose breaking from were she stood.

The girl got back to her feet and charged at her again, she was about to go through with her plan when the girl kick some sand up and into her eyes. Hiniko cried out in surprise before stumbling backwards, she felt the girl punch her in the side and launch her into the side wall with a harsh thud. She stumbled to her feet and rubbed her eyes furiously, she looked back over to the girl to see she was back on the move, she approached her and smashed her in the side with a roundhouse kick. She was once again launched and got skimmed over the sand like a pebble on water.

She got to her feet once more and saw the girl was on her way to her again, she was charging really quickly. She got into stance to fight but she then felt something strange, like her brain was being churned in a stew pot. She ignored the sensation and paid attention to the girl in front of her, to her surprise she saw her slow down. Not significantly but enough for her to notice, the girl looked to be doing the exact same thing as before but slower; perhaps it was part of the girls quirk to make her enemy's perception slowed.

She tried to move her hands to get ready to fight, but to her surprise they moved at normal speed. She felt her skin writh in a familiar way, this was the doctors doing, had they somehow increased her reaction time. The speed she was going at made sense since she had most of her muscle replace with god knows what, but she didn't get the reaction time thing. She didn't actually car though, she had a fight to win, she charged at the girl and pulled back her own fist and met her in the middle making another small shock wave to move through the arena.

Whatever they had done to her was able to make her keep up with a power type quirk so that was handy, she block one of the girls attacks and tried one of her own. This carried on for a while, there fists meeting arms in a dance of punches and blocks; she then socked the girl in the stomach, who in return socked round the jaw. They traded blow after blow until she had enough, she summoned green at the girls feet before sweeping her over and punching her in the stomach so hard that she was launched across the arena floor.

The girl was struggling to stand, a smirk came onto her face as she shrouded the girl over with a fine coat of green. She yanked her arm up and the green obeyed taking the girl with it, smashing her into the ceiling. The girl fell back onto the ground with a brutal thud, a grin crossed over her face now as she realised something. She re-summoned the coat of green and smashed the girl back into the roof, then the floor, then the wall, then the ceiling and the the other wall. She smashed the girl from each surface, cackling all the while.

She then had an even better idea, she summoned a group of spike on the wall before slamming the girl into it at high speeds. She then let her control of the green go causing it to disappear, the girls body fell flat on the ground with a splat, she had several holes in her along with broken bones poking out through her skin. She stared at the body, a chuckle escaped her lips, it was funny really, she couldn't even stop herself from brutally murdering an innocent person. She fell to her hands and knees, she laughed as tears ran from her eyes and fell to the sand bellow.

She clutched at her hair as she continued to laugh, the sand bellow her face was now completely wet from tears, she felt her nails dig into her scalp but didn't care. She had just killed another innocent because she was a monster. That was it , she was a monster. She felt something jam into her neck, she already knew it was a dart. She watched her vision blur and her muscles lock up, she collapsed into a puddle of her own tears. A corpse not even five meters away.


	4. Flames of hate

**…**

* * *

**Chapter Four: Flames of hate **

* * *

**…**

* * *

He was once again running roof to roof, using the odd explosion to boost his speed, there had been no trouble so far through the night. He did suppose that was a good thing, but he couldn't help but feel bored as he leapt between buildings. He was even half hoping for Ereaserhead to chase him, he normally comes out to do so every night along his patrol root and just generally got in his way, he let a heavy sigh come from his lips. He reached into his pocket and picked out an old flip phone he had found a few years prior, it had all the contacts to his 'friends' on it and was not only untraceable but off the grid, meaning no phone bill.

He scrolled through the contacts looking for one in particular, upon reaching it he pressed the call button and pressed the phone to his ear. He waits a few seconds as the dial tone rings to him, on the fifth tone the phone was picked up. "Sup, it's me Ground Zero," he didn't get a reply, but he wasn't expecting one. This 'friend' in particular always liked to remain anonymous, he didn't judge, all it would take was one ill willed villain or cop with a voice recognition quirk and he would be shut down. He jumped down from the building he was running on and down to the fire escape bellow.

After double and triple checking there was no security cameras around "yeah, so I would like and up to date version of both the police archives and the quirk registry please, oh and I'll pay in the usual way," the call hung up. He hummed in content, he had scoured the police archives and quirk registry and found no one with sight based teleportation, he was hoping that it was classified so that he could just get it in this version. The way that this 'friend' works is pretty simple, depending on how much you pay the better quality stuff they give. You could pay in both money and favours, he does the second because he had no money.

Well that wasn't particularly true, he 'technically' had two million yen, but that was given to him by his grandmother for college so it was off limits to him until he was 'old enough'. That's not to say that he didn't take a couple thousand yen for the voice changer on his mask but that didn't count, he still wondered how it edited his voice while not covering it but he didn't ask questions. The police thought they were chasing a man in the mid to late thirty's, a short man in the mid to late thirty's mind you but that didn't particularly matter.

He went to put his phone in his pocket only to feel his arm being tugged to the side, he watched in horror as his phone tumbles nine stories down to the ally bellow. He snaps his head to his arm in anger to see what caused this, he was greeted with the familiar material of Eraserhead's capture material. He weaved his free hand through the material and yanked it back, he had seen Ereaserhead use the thing enough to know how it works. He heard a grunt of surprise from the roof above as the man in question fell from his perch on the building above, so that's were the bastard was.

He sent the capture weapon up to greet him, it wound around him easily before he tugged on the piece of cloth causing Ereaser to fall down to the fire escape next to Ground Zero. He unwound the material from his arm, he was pissed, the asshole had just cost him his phone. "How can y-," the man called out in shock, he sent a strand to wrap around the mans mouth, he didn't care what the man had to say. He then tied the man to the fire escape before he hauled him off the edge. The underground hero Ereaserhead was stuck hanging upside down on the tenth story of a building.

Ground Zero proceeded to jump down to the alley, using explosions to cushion the fall, from there he rushed up to his now destroyed phone. He started to check out the damages, thankfully the screen was only crack slightly and the majority of the fall had been absorbed by the battery. He could hook something up once he got home, it was fixable. It started to rain, the water seeped into the cracked screen and the broken battery, he frowned before tossing the useless piece of plastic to the ground before stomping on it.

No point in leaving any trace of his existence, he then ran farther into the alley before using one large explosion to launch himself up and to the building above. He then ran across said buildings roof before using an unreasonably large explosion to catapult himself to the next building over. He was unquestionably pissed, he wanted to blow something up, luckily for him he saw a large burst of fire a few blocks away. He closed his eyes, it was going to be an exhausting night that was to be sure. He started to run to the commotion and upon reaching it he saw that a hero was in deadlock with a villain in front of a bank.

More accurately it was Endeavour against a water based villain, he was even more pissed than before. Endeavor not only has the highest property damage and villain kills under his belt but also has the highest casualty rate. Not to mention his wife was in a mental ward and that his first son had been proclaimed dead a couple of years ago; just seeing the bastard brought a frown to his face. He let yet another sigh come from his lips before crouching down and analysing the situation; it was simple really, Endeavour was trying to overwhelm a water user villain with a crap ton of fire.

He looked past the two and saw a large hole in the side of the bank, he looked in and saw civilians, about six of them to be exact, he let a frown come onto his face. He could see that the flames Endeavor was constantly pouring out was getting closer and closer to civilians inside. He needed to see no more and shot into action, he used to explosions to shoot him from the building and towards the hole. He dodged the streams of fire and water until he got through the hole, he made sure to roll to displace his momentum, he didn't want to use explosions this close to civilians.

He looked around and assessed the inside of the building, his previous analysis about the number of civilians had been correct, he saw that there was only one entrance and it was right next to the villain. He looked at the civilians and saw that they were all looking at him in shock, "I need you guys to get as far away from those flames as possible, I'll go get Endeavour to stop blasting flames around like that so don't worry," the civilians scurried to follow his orders, he ran to the entrance of the bank and slammed the door open.

He saw the villain snap her head to him in shock before trying to shoot a stream of water at him, but it was to late. He raised both of his hands and released a large explosion, not big enough to leave any damage to the surrounding area but enough to leave it a chard mess. The villain was launched to the other side of the street, skimming along the concrete all the way. He glanced at Endeavour to see a seer on his face, he made sure he new that he had the exact same feelings towards him by sticking up his middle finger directly at the number two pro hero.

He turned back to the villain, not caring about the dicks reaction, to see that they had gotten back to her feet. He got back into fighting stance before launching himself at her, he saw that she had swung her arms in an upward arch to make a wall of water to act as a shield. He launched himself over the wall with a small explosion before using another to bring himself rocketing back down; lashing out with his left leg as he went aiming for the back of her head, using the momentum of the previous explosion to smash her into the concrete face first before hearing the wet crunch of her nose breaking.

He reached for his rope, thinking that he had downed her, only to receive a blast of water to chest. He was rocketed back, he used minuscule explosions to correct himself mid air before slamming his hand onto the floor onto the ground and flipping onto his feet. He wasn't launched that far so he used a pair of powerful explosions to blast him back at the villain at high speed, he saw that the villain was getting ready to send another blast at him before a stream of fire hit her in the leg. She screamed out in pain, it seemed that Endeavour was no longer doing nothing, good for him.

He took advantage of the moment lack in defence in the villain and used his quirk to blast forward at ludicrous speed before placing his hands above and bellow his center of mass before detonating. He may mostly fight in alley ways and small streets, but he is allot more fit for big open spaces like as his quirk was on the destructive side and he could let loose a bit. The two detonations sent him spinning, that paired with the already ridiculous momentum made him become a ridiculous spinning wheel of death. He was upon the villain in seconds and hit her head on.

He had designed this attack not only to be ridiculously fast but to also pack a punch that is only rivaled in force by the 'Howitzer Impact' he and Izu had made when the were kids; he had called it flame wheel, it was basic but he didn't care for flashy names. When his open palm came into contact with her he made sure that he released a powerful explosion on the site of impact, the second he did so he felt almost all of his forward momentum being canceled out by the force the blast came out. That was the power of this move, the force couldn't just go nowhere and if he had pulled this move wrong it would have been blasted back into his face.

But that was it, if he did it the correct way then his target would not only be victim of the explosion he let of but also the combined force of his speed and rotation. The second the explosion went of on the villain he was sent back a couple meters by the force of the attack; unfortunately for the villain, they didn't just get a couple meters, she was flung backwards at insane speed with only the buildings at the opposite end of the street to cushion he fall. He let the resulting smoke from the attack clear before making his way to the downed villain.

Once he got to her he reached for his rope only to recoil in pain, he looked at his palm and watched as blood ran down his skin. It was pretty clear that this attack should be left alone until he could handle more of the back lash of his quirk, he was only twelve so his quirk hasn't finished developing yet. He picked up his rope from the place he had dropped it and began to tie up the knocked out villain. Once done he stumbled towards the door to the bank, he knew that Endeavour was shouting at him but he couldn't bring himself to care.

He swung the door open and looked into the banks reception to see that the civilians had huddled in the far corner of the bank, he waved them over as he called out to them "You can come out, we handled the villain," they all got out of what ever position they were in and started to make their way to the entrance. He let a small smile come onto his face, it's been a while since he had dealt with something on this scale and it was rather pleasing. He turned to leave but was stopped, his filed of vision swirled and spun as if he were on roller coaster as his body was launched to the floor.

He quickly used his quirk to launch himself back to his feet, he glared back to the cause to his expedition to the floor. To his mild surprise, he saw Ereaserhead standing there with his fist still extended from the punch; the man was panting heavily with sweat come off of his brow in spades, there was also a major lack of capture weapon on his shoulder. That did make sense as he was rapped head to toe in it five minutes earlier, he briefly wondered how he was able to escape, but he quickly dismissed the thought the second he saw the large combat knife he had in his other hand.

He heard gasps and mutters from the civilians behind him and saw a look the resembled shock on Endeavour face, he let himself fall into fighting stance. It was a vague mix of martial arts that he learnt from observing different heroes that was designed to confuse the enemy on what he planed on doing. "What are you doing!" yelled Endeavour, he felt smoke start to rise from his palms; he was acting shocked that Ereaserhead punched him around the face, pretending that he wasn't close to doing that himself a couple of minutes ago.

Ereaserhead didn't respond right away, taking his time to breath and he couldn't really blame him, not only did he have to break out of his own capture weapon while dangling nine stories in the air but he would also have had to sprint all the way here if he made it to him this soon after being tied up. Ereaser raised his finger and pointed it at him before panting out a response, "you ever heard of Ground Zero," Endeavour's eyes sparked in recognition before he nodded, he then turning his head to scowl at him. He felt himself gulp, sure he was confident that he could win against them one to one, but together he wasn't sure he could win.

He watch as Endeavour swung his arm back while he ignited his arm, it was a classic move for a fire user used to prepare a blast of fire. Normally he would be confident in his ability to dodge and he still was, but not so much for the civilians directly behind him. Time started to move in slow motion for him, he looked back to Endeavour to see that he was still following through with the move, the move was relatively quick taking around one second to perform. He dived back and shoved the first civilian away before doing the next, there was just one more left, a small kid around the age of six. He looked back at Endeavour to see the approaching fire.

He briefly tried to use his quirk to overpower the blast, but predictably, Ereaser was using his quirk to stop him from using his. He dove down and grabbed the kid, cursing under his breath all the way, before he curled around the boy protecting him from the fire blast. He felt the flames rush over skin, burning every point of contact and burning through his_ fire proof_ costume, if he hadn't protected the kid he would have been dead. Once the attack subsided he staggered to his feet, he felt his body protest, his vision was going dark around the edges and he felt his stab wound throb.

He glared at the 'heroes', Endeavour was going off on a monologue while Ereaser looked like he was going to say something along the lines of 'give up, we beat you' and honestly it pissed him off. "Shut the fuck up,!" sure swearing in presence of a child is frowned upon but he honestly didn't care, Endeavour stop rubbing his ego to glare at him while Ereaser looked slightly taken off guard; whenever he was around him he acted happy go luck, so to see him pissed must have been off putting. "To be honest you didn't surprise me Endeavour, but Ereaser, I expected better of you," he put as much venom into those words as he could.

He then grabbed the child by the hand and started to lead him to the side, glaring at the two heroes all the way. Once reuniting the kid with their parent he turned back to the heroes, "We're taking this outside," It wasn't a question, nor was it a statement. No, it was a command. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his cargo pants and stormed past the two heroes and through the door, the three of them walked into the center of the street before he turned to them. He gripped onto the smoke grenade in his right pocket, he waited for them to make a move.

They both sprang into action, he dodged a blast of fire and ducked under a knife swing, it was slightly surprising to see Ereaser use his knife, but he was to pissed to care. He jumped to the side, away from the heroes, hands still in his pockets. He hooked his thumb under the hammer of the smoke bomb as he dodged another blast of fire and a knee to the stomach. He flipped it off as he scraped by another blast of fire and kicked Ereaser in the head. He pulled the pin as a javelin of fire went past his head and a knife narrowly missed his gut, he scowled to himself, they were trying to capture him by making him unable to move, how kind.

Five seconds until the smoke bomb goes off and he had narrowly dodged under a kick to the head and jumped over yet another blast of fire. He took his left hand out of his pocket and reached behind him, the back of his hoodie was completely burned off along with the back of his bandages leaving a massive hole. He reached into said massive hole and yanked at the remaining bandages causing his stab wound to flare in pain, his vision became even more fuzzy. He glanced at the bandages, lucky for him he had only got the top layer of bandage. He didn't want any of his DNA on it.

Four seconds until the smoke bomb goes off and he threw the bandages at Eraser's face, he activated his quirk launching himself at Endeavor before kicking him around the face. The bastard barley even stumbled, he reached his left arm up and let of a massive explosion the blew the giant of a man off of his feet and a couple of feet in the air. He tried to then back away from them with his quirk only to find that not only was Ereaser back in action but the bandages he threw at him were now flouting around his neck like his capture weapon, he cursed under his breath.

Three seconds until the smoke bomb goes off and things weren't looking good, the bandages didn't act as a full replacement for Ereaser's capture weapon but it did make everything more difficult. He dodged a strand of bandage as he ducked under some more fire, then he blocked a kick from Ereaser before ducking under another strand of bandage. His stab wound throbbed even more making him stumble, he then received a knee to the gut that made his vision go black, he jumped back as his vision sprang back into life.

Two seconds until the smoke bomb goes off, he was close to passing out and the stab wound coupled with the large burn on his back made it harder and harder to fight. If things continued like this he would be down for the count, he needed to go on the offensive. Ereaser was running at him and that was were he found his opportunity, he ran towards him before ducking under a strand of bandage. He cupped his hand and felt sweat pool at the bottom, his quirk made him sweat more than normal, not by a lot but in a situation like this it was everything.

He lashed out with his cupped hand one second before the smoke bomb goes off, sweat sprang forth from his hand and into Ereaser's eyes. He ripped the smoke bomb from his pocket and threw it to the floor, he then shoved his hand into Ereaser's face and let a small crackle of heat rise from his palms. He knew how his quirk worked and despite how annoying he was he didn't want to cripple the hero, sure the explosions going of in his eyes would hurt but it wouldn't cripple him from hero work. The smoke bomb went off unleashing a wave of smoke.

Ereaserhead could defiantly not see him so he swung his arms behind him before he activated his quirks in dubious amounts launching him up and into the air. He flew through the air, over several buildings, but he could instantly tell he wasn't safe. He knew his quirk and he knew using it like he was wouldn't generate as much heat as was coming from behind him, he used a couple of small explosions to turn and see what was going on. To his displeasure he saw that Endeavour was in pursuit, two super heated jets of fire coming from his feet keeping him in the air

He was about forty meters away, if continued the way he was he would either fall and die or be captured by the pile of flaming trash. He did some maths in his head, he could try flame wheel but that wouldn't have enough oomph. He had no choice but the howitzer, it wouldn't be as strong as he and Izuku had planned with him half dead and not even a teen but it would be enough. He swung his hand back once again and blasted himself at Endeavour, he then swung his arms to his side and began spinning through the air at blinding speed.

The original idea for the howitzer was basically an areal variant of the flame wheel, but Izuku suggested something else. He brought up the pyramid of ignition, it was something that they learnt in elementary school and was the bare bones of starting a fire. It said that to start a fire that you need fuel, heat and oxygen, Izu said that he had both the fuel and the heat and all he was lacking in was oxygen. He then went on to say that instead of spinning like a wheel he should spin in such a way to form a trail behind him to trap all the oxygen in.

Back then it just sounded cool, but he had done the maths a few years back and it checked out. All he needed was about twenty meters of free space and to be in the air, it was specific, sure, but if he did do it wrong, unlike the flame wheel which only would hurt like fuck, he would die. The way it is done is by siphoning, the explosion would suck oxygen in and would suck up all the oxygen that was built up in the trail to make one big explosion. The thing is that if he did it wrong was that the explosion would travel up the trail, dragging him with it basically cooking him alive before shooting him out at mach speed.

The shortened version is that not only does it have all the perks of the flame wheel but also had more oxygen to feed the explosion to make for an explosion that could destroy entire buildings. He was glad that he was so high in the air, it was only him and Endeavour, no one else could get hurt by this. He was upon Endeavour in seconds and he hoped beyond hope that this would work, he swung both his hands in front of him and let his quirk do the rest. He ignited as much of his sweat as he could making sure that not even a drop went to waste.

Heat licked up his arms as he was launched back at unprecedented speed, he span around before using some smaller explosions to slow his decent. Upon landing in a barrel roll he snapped his head up to see if he was still being followed, instead of seeing the looming form of Endeavour he saw the rising smoke from the howitzer. It was easily a hundred meters wide and tall, the smoke looked beautiful. It licked slowly up into the sky, a shell of the explosion it once was. He ripped his eyes from the sight and got back to his feet.

He staggered to the edge of the building before trying to use his quirk to boost up and over the railing to the next rooftop over. He screamed out in pain, he looked at his palms to see that the were both burst open; he looked back at the rooftop and saw that miraculously that there was no blood on the surface. He hoped on top of the railing instead before jumping over to the next building, he did this for the next thirty minuets until he reached the roof of his home. He hopped down onto the fire escape before making his way down to his window.

He then clambered through and into his room, he couldn't rest just yet. He stumbled to his desk, making sure that no blood got on the floor, he slid the top draw open and got out a bobby pin and a long piece of metal. He had almost forgot that he had the supplies to lock pick but he thanked his lucky stars that one piece of random information was remembered. He picked them up making sure that blood doesn't get on them, he staggered to the door and started fiddling with the lock, a couple minutes later the door gave a small click.

He slowly opened the door before stepping out into the hallway, he then limped all the way to the bathroom making sure that he didn't make a sound. Upon reaching the bathroom he was relieved to see the door open, he slumped in and went straight for the sink. After turning the cold water on her stuck his hands under the steady stream, he barley held back a scream as he felt the pain rickashay through his body. He stared at the water as it turned from a bright red to more of a pinkish colour as they started to bleed less and less.

From there he grabbed onto the medpack under the sink along with a towel, he slowly got into the shower in the corner of the room before placing the medpack and the towel on the floor. He took of his cargo pants and hoodie and threw them out as well, he looked down and saw the stab wound was leaking blood at an alarming rate; he grabbed the shower head before putting it onto the coldest setting and blasting it into his side. Once again pain came rearing its ugly head, he wanted to scream but had to resisted it because of his parents in the other room.

Once blood stopped coming he reached out of the shower and to the medpack and towel, this was were the real pain began, he shoved the towel into his mouth before flipping the medpack open. He sat down on the floor before starting to rummage through the medpack until he found what he was looking for, a needle and thread, he tied the thread through the needle with shaky hands. He started, first thing first he had to start with three threads through the same hole, he punctured the skin; he screamed into the towel.

He carried on and did the next two, he then had to do the rest of the wound. It had blown out the entirety of his palm making it all fold back to reveal the muscle underneath, he got back to work. He flipped all the skin back into place before making his way down the wound with his needle and thread, after a painstaking couple of minutes he had the entire thing done and tied off at the end. Tears freely fell from his eyes, he rubbed it away, he grabbed the needle and thread with his now patched up hand and got to work on his other hand.

Once both hands were finished he got to work on the stab wound, in the fight against the two heroes he had ripped the stitches out completely with that move he used on Ereaser totally ripping the stitches. But when he used the howitzer he had completely reopened it, he started to get to work with wound, he felt his body start to give out and his vision go black multiple times but he ignored it in favour of finishing off the stitches. It took him considerably longer then it took with his hand but after a couple of hours but he had finally finished.

He then reached into the medpack and gabbed three rolls of bandages, after another couple of minutes he had his hands completely covered in bandages. He couldn't operate as ground zero for a while but that was the least of his concerns at the moment, he grabbed some burn ointment from the pack and got to work on his back. He was pretty sure that they were second degree burns, not three, he thanked the lord that he had the fore thought to give his costume fire resistance. He had almost run out of burn ointment by the time that he was done, Endeavour is an asshole.

The finish line was in sight, he was on the last step, he had to bandage his stab wound, it took him a couple of minutes before he was done but he had finally finished. He started to back everything away before grabbing his vigilante costume and returning to his room and locking it from the inside. From there he shoved his costume into his ruck sack before returning every thing to normal. He then went to his wardrobe and grabbed onto one of his sets of pajamas, his original set was still at the warehouse. From there he got into bed a closed his eyes, he was asleep in seconds.

* * *

**...**

* * *

He felt consciousness return to him, he could vaguely remember winning the arena but that was how his memory was at the beginning of every assignment so it wasn't out of the ordinary. His eyes dragged open to reveal the dark room he had been kept in. He looked around the room and tried to find out where he was from little he could see. Plain walls with stone cold tile floor, the only odd thing about it was the overall lack of furniture. The door was right in front of him, yet he didn't dare go to open it. Costumers didn't take to kindly to him wandering around their 'base'. He sat there for a couple minuted waiting for the costumer to come.

He was cold, the feeling wasn't that foreign to him as The Warehouse may as well be a refrigerator. But the fact that this almost seemed colder was a little bit unnerving, yet he didn't particularly care. He had been in more depressing places than this, and he meant a lot more, so it didn't really concern him at all and what was the costumer going to do to him anyway. the worst they could do would be to detonate the bombs in his wrists and angles but he had lived without one hand for a few years he could handle another one. Even though he would be driven mad with how itchy they would be.

Soon enough he heard the door click open, he looked up and saw a man that looked to be in his late thirty's in an all white business suit; it was rather odd for a villain to have something like that but he didn't ask questions. The man slowly walked into the room and offered a hand down to him, he grabbed onto it and hauled himself up an to his feet. The man then spoke "follow me,", so he did, the two of them walked out of the room and into the winding corridors of wherever he was. He and the suited man walked for a couple of minutes and there had been a few doors but the man didn't go into them so he, once again, didn't ask.

After half an hour of walking they both reached a door, it looked like it was pure oak unlike all the other doors that had been made from plastic. It stood tall and strong, it had sent a shiver down his spine the moment he saw it. His gut was telling him to avoid the door, it almost seemed to loom above him, however his head told him that it looked absolutely fine and he had learned a long time ago to trust your gut over your head. Though his head had a few good ideas time to time. He eyed the door as the man walked over to it before looking back at him, the man looked at his expression before opening the door and gesturing for him to enter.

He complied and walked into the room, inside there was a table and a chair with nothing else except for the bright white walls and tile floor, he was getting deja vu. The man followed him in and gestured for him to go and sit in the chair, he complied, the man looked him up and down before nodding to himself. He reached behind himself and pulled a briefcase out of thing air before slamming it down on the table in front of him, "Do you know what this is," he nodded. It was a briefcase, obviously. The man then flipped the briefcase open and showed him the contents, it contained five vials filled up with a sickly purple liquid.

"How about this," he shook his head, the man closed the brief case before sliding it closer to him. "Good, you will be selling this to some thugs in the alley of this building, do you understand," He nodded as the man gave him a slip of paper, a simple mission then, sell drugs go back to customer and then get sent back to The Warehouse, easy. "Oh, and don't sell it for less than three-hundred-thousand yen," he nodded once again before taking the briefcase up into his hands and stood up out of his chair. He then went to the door, he was looking forward to a challenge but he had to make do with what he had, before being stopped by the sound of the mans voice.

"And put these on," the man then threw a pair of cloths at him that he once again pulled out of thin air, "We don't want you to go into the world looking like death,". The man then walked out through the oak door, he honestly didn't care about his appearance but he assumed that he needed to look half decent if he's selling something. He took off The Warehouse stranded gown and slipped into the cloths he was provided with. They were leaps and bounds better then the gown in every possible way, he picked the briefcase back up and walked over to the exit to the room. He wasn't quite sure how he was going to get to the meeting place but he didn't actually care all that much.

He opened the door to reveal, instead of the cold dead corridor of before, an alive and bustling street with civilians running amok and the sun shining happily down. Once again, he wasn't going to question it, he stepped out into the street as he flipped the piece of paper open. It was a picture of a building, he sighed to himself as he activated his quirk causing the world to slow to a stop. He jumped onto the roof of the building he had just exited and started to hop from one to another, he had done things similar to this before and couldn't bring himself to feel annoyed at the lack luster instructions he had been given.

After a couple of minutes of searching he finally found the building he was looking for before he jumped down into the alley way and slipping behind a dumpster. He often hated assignments like this, they were tedious at best and flat out infuriating at worst. After a couple more minuets of waiting and pondering if he should flat out jump off of a roof from shear boredom; he heard the sound of feet entering the ally way, he looked over and saw a group of around three thugs walking down the ally towards him. He stepped into the middle of the ally and saw the thugs stop in there tracks, two of them stayed behind as one walked forward.

"You got the goods," the one thug said after he reached spitting distance of Midoriya, he grunted in response as he placed the briefcase flat against one arm before flipping it open with the other. The thug looked into the briefcase before picking up one of the vials and inspecting it incredulously before placing it back into the brief case, Midoriya then closed the case and put back by his side. The thug glared at him before saying "Hand it over then," he felt his own eye twitch, he looked at the man up and down. All in all looked pretty weak, made sense why he would be trying to buy drugs and the fact that the other thugs stayed back he was probably the strongest.

He sighed through his nose, before glaring back up at the thug, "You need to pay," the thugs snickered before the lead one gestured for the other two to come closer, they complied and walked equally as close to him as the leader. They loomed over him with grins on their faces, he wanted to face palm, the idiots probably thought that they could get away with stealing the drugs from him because of his stature. He looked the other thugs up and down and saw that they also looked weak, one of them had an obvious mutant type quirk while the other had nothing special about him, probably an emitter type than maybe a transformation.

"Well you see," the lead thug said as he grinned, "I don't think we want to,". Once again he let a sigh out through his nose, they really thought they could beat him, the thought was laughable in and of itself. "So we'll be taking that and you'll do nothing to stop us," the thug then cracked his knuckles "will you," he had the resit the urge to kill the man on the spot. The fact that the three of them thought that they compared to him got on his nerves. He turned around and, much to the thugs surprise, walked away; after a few steps he placed the briefcase on the floor, he didn't want to damage 'the goods'.

He walked back over to the thugs and sighed for what felt like the thousandths time, he cracked his own knuckles and faced the leader head on. "Are you sure you want to do this to yourself," he asked the thugs, his response was the growing smirks on their faces. The lead thug went to hit him, he sent power into his right arm and punched the man square in the chest. He went flying back before skimming across the floor like a skipping stone before coming to a stop near the mouth of the ally, the other thugs responded by trying their own luck, he made quick work of them, smashing one into the wall and introducing the other to the floor.

After he had finished with them he went back over to briefcase and picked it up before walking over to the lead thug, he lowered his foot onto the mans neck and placed the briefcase down; he then lowered his head down to a mere centermeters away from his face before saying "That would be six-hundred-thousand yen please,". The man looked like he was going to retort but he quickly put a stop to that by pushing down on the mans neck with his foot. The thug scrambled around his pockets before yanking out a wallet, he snatched it from his grip and pulled out a wad of cash before counting through it.

He lay off the pressure before stepping back, he looked down at the man in disgust as he writhed around on the floor like a worm; he was half tempted to put the disgusting beast out of its misery before deciding against it, he could be a 'patron' or something like that. He used his quirk in his legs and jumped up and onto the roof of a nearby building, he wasn't quite sure what to do next but going back to the building he was spat from seemed like the best idea. He jumped building to building, his body covered in blue lightening all the way, he was tempted to just launch himself there in one go but he wasn't in the mood to have to kill a hero so he refrained from doing so.

He was jumping between two buildings before he felt an abnormal weight being added to his right arm, the abnormal weight sent him tumbling down and onto the fire escape of the building he was jumping to. He looked down at his arm to see that yet another briefcase was in his hand along with another slip of paper, he opened the briefcase and saw the saw the familiar sickly pupal liquid inside five different vials. He opened the slip and saw that there was a picture of yet another building, so it was one of those assignments, this particular costumer was going to squeeze as much use out of him as possible.

He couldn't really be upset with that, it was reasonable to do so. He knew that he had to be worth a lot of money if The Warehouse called him a high value agent and wasting it on one drug deal would be stupid, he sighed as he activated his quirk again and watched the world slow to a stop once more. The sound of the street bellow grew more drew out and the small drops of water that fell from the gutter hung in midair. He jumped back up onto the roof above and flipped open the piece of paper before breaking out into a run, he didn't always stop time when using his quirk, not because of a limitation but because it got boring after a while.

After another couple drug sales, time was almost up. It was subtle felling in his chest that alerted him to this, it seemed like the customer knew this also as all the money he had collect from the deals had been magically transported out of his pockets and he hadn't had another briefcase of drugs teleported to him for the past couple of minutes. He hopped down from the building he was on and down into the alleyway bellow, he had spent so long on this assignment that the sun was almost bellow the horizon, he wondered if the money the man had used to buy him had been made back.

Not that it mattered, if he didn't then it would be to bad for the man not him. He slid down the ally and next to yet another dumpster, he curled up next to it and waited, he didn't know how he got back to The Warehouse but he didn't want anything bad happening to him when he was out. He felt the small feeling start to grow, it was subtle, so much so that the first time it had happened all those years ago he had barley recognised that it was there. All of a sudden he felt the feeling stop, he braised himself, sure this had happened to him hundreds of times but it didn't make it any less painful. A couple of seconds past and then the penny dropped

He felt the feeling explode across his body, going from an odd imbalance to a burning inferno, it felt like his skin was peeling off at the edges and his bones were being evaporated. He could have sworn he was bleeding from every orifice yet that was what happened every time, he wanted to scream out in pain but knew that it was ultimately pointless to do so. He curled up tighter into himself until it felt like he would crush his own knees from how much he was clinging to them, he could hear the blood rush to his ears and the air coming into his lungs as his vision turned black.

* * *

Colour returned within seconds and his surroundings had changed significantly, he knew that time had surely passed since everything went black but it had only felt like a couple of seconds. He looked around and was greeted with the familiar sight of the cages, he scanned the vaguely familiar scenery with blurry eyes and saw the rough outline of the surroundings he had been living next to for the last few days; the Nomu over and to the right and the corpses that lined some of the further out cages, one looked only a couple days old. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and looked to the cage directly to his right.

He was greeted with a unnerving sight, what he expect was to see Tokiken there balling her eyes out, but what he was greeted with made a pit form in his stomach. She was sat in the cage next to him just like last time but; she was culled into a ball with her head tucked between her knees, just like last time, but now he could hear faint muttering crawling of and away from her form. He tried to listen to what she was saying but all he got in return was a broken stream of meaninglessness words. It was clear that the assessment had not been kind to her, nit to say it was kind to anyone just that she looked like hell.

Her gown looked battered and worn with sweat, vomit and blood stains scattered over the piece of clothing, .Her arms were over her knees and the sleeves of the gown looked to no longer be there, the first thing he saw was the excess amount of scar tissue around her right wrist and upon farther inspection he saw the edges looked to be made from teeth. But what then drew his attention was the small scars now riddled her arms that he knew had not been there before, those had to be the work of the doctors and the fact that she had to experience 'that' so early made him cringe internally. He felt sorry for her as he had the exact same thing happen to him to.

He felt something in his chest, he wasn't quite sure what it was but it felt really unpleasant, he thought about it for a moment and got nothing. _Maybe it's empathy?_ The voice in the back of his head said, he instantly kicked out that thought, he had gotten rid of that a while ago. But that didn't change the fact that when he looked at her the feeling grew and stung, he sighed to himself, he had made a decision back when he had first met her that he would help her so that she would shut up. _Well she's pretty quite now?_ he ignored the voice, it knew that's not what he meant, it was obvious, crystal clear .

He eased his hand through the bars of his cage and reached through hers before placing it on her shoulder, she stopped the muttering almost instantly and started to whimper and try to move away from his touch. He cursed to himself, she had definitely been disturbed by the assessment and the fact that she had been to the doctors made it even worse. He wasn't quite sure what to do, he wasn't exactly an expert on mental health and the fact he had been murdering people for god knows how long doesn't really help that much either. The most social contact he got was with the guards and even then their relationship was deplorable at best.

"Hey," he wasn't sure how to start but that seemed to be as good as anything, "It's okay, it's me. Your okay they wont hurt you now," he wasn't lying, the doctors rarely pull something like this and unless she was due for the arena anytime soon she should be okay for a while. She had stopped whimpering and relaxed into his touch, it was kind of uncomfortable that she was that relieved to hear his voice but he couldn't blame her, every little comfort helped. He rubbed small circles on her back, that was about the only comforting technique he knew; he had learnt it when his mother had done the same for him in a thunderstorm.

It was funny how clear some memories were and how cloudy others could be, sure he could remember that on instance but he couldn't even remember his best friends face. But of course he could remember them both ranting about how cool All Might was. He could perfectly picture the room he was diagnosed as quirkless in but not the clinic, it was rather amusing to him how his brain focused on the finer details like that. He shook himself from his internal dialogue and looked back down at Tokiken to see if she was going to respond, but was greeted by her form still fixed into a ball, he was still unsure on what to do.

"I'm sorry, I should have gone into more detail about the assessment and this wouldn't have happened," he wasn't wrong, he should have gone into more detail. If he had said something of use instead of going on endless tangents then she wouldn't have been literally tortured at the hands of the 'doctors'. He carried on rubbing circles into he back. He hadn't felt so useless in a while, he couldn't help her when she was right in front of him. He then heard something come from Tokiken's mouth that wasn't a sting of random sounds and for the first time he thanked the doctors for enhancing his senses the way they did.

'I'm a monster' those were the words that had left her mouth, he had to be honest he felt the exact same way towards himself. But to him it was blindingly obvious that the same could not be said about her, all it would take was one look and you would know. "No your not," it was the only thing he could think to say but it seemed to work, she stopped mumbling completely and slowly moved her head to face him. Her face wasn't that pleasant, resembling what he guessed he looked like back when he had first entered the hell hole he currently resided in, she had pure brow eyes that held nothing but self loathing.

"Y-your wrong," he could feel her shaking under his grip, he knew what she had to have went through and he couldn't help but feel guilty. She was going to go through even more pain then needed all because he didn't give her adequate warning, he cursed himself, because of his incompetence she felt like she was a monster. He searched his mind for something, anything, to convince her that she wasn't a monster. He looked around and looked for something, his eyes brushed across the cages and landed on one of the corpses, he was pretty sure that he could come up with a way to convince her using them.

He pointed at the corpse, "Look at that," she looked over to the corpse and a vague expression if disgust spread across her face; this one corpse in particular had clearly been dead for a couple of days now, rats nibbled and their flesh and other vermin had dug through their eye sockets along with other passages into the inside of the body to make it almost impossible to tell anything about the person that they had been before. They were also curled into a ball but they had their hands clutching their stomach clearly in pain, probably died of starvation, "are they a monster," Tokiken looked back at him in confusion.

"W-what do you mea-," he interrupted her "look at that corpse and tell me if they are a monster,", she continued to look at the corpse with even more confusion. Hr hated how normal she looked, she was currently looking a dead body up and down and she didn't even look the least bit disgusted; the expression she wore was more akin to pity, which was definitely not normal unless your a police officer or something like that. She looked back to him with a brow raised in confusion, he guessed that he had to spell it out to her, "that person has probably done the same things as you, probably worse, but do you think their a monster,".

She looked back over to the corpse, a look of contemplation on her face. "Well t-their differ-" he was growing tired of having to but in on everything she said but he needed to, if he didn't she would end up like him and he wouldn't wish that on anyone; well maybe on the doctors but he digressed. "You're missing my point," she looked back at him with yet another confused look, it was getting old quick, "you have as much free will in this situation as that corpse, you didn't choose any of this. You had choose between yourself and them and you made the rational chose,".

She still didn't look convinced, he couldn't think of anything that could convince her. He strained his mind trying to think of something to say that would convince her that she wasn't a monster. He looked back at her wrist and an idea came to him, he reached his hand around her with ease and grabbed her wrist, he felt her try to recoil but he didn't let up his grip. He pulled it over to the edge of he cage and glared at the scar tissue, he looked between her and her wrist, she looked away as if he would be repulsed by what she had done. He was't, he had tried to do the exact same thing so he couldn't judge.

"It was a good plan based on what you knew, but the bomb is implanted in your bone so you wouldn't have been able to get to it from the start," she looked back at him with a look mixed between confusion and shock "why did you do it," that looked like it took her even more off guard, she tried to look away again as tears reaffirmed themselves on her face. "I'm going to assume it was because of the assessment, I can't really blame you, it isn't exactly the most pleasant experience,". She carried on to stare at him with a look leaning more towards apathy, it was impressive how quickly she could switch emotions, but once again he couldn't blame her.

Apathy this early on was a little concerning, he understood emotions like anger and despair but apathy wasn't exactly normal. Maybe she had already gone to the arena, but that was basically the exact same thing as the assessment. Perhaps those two hell's paired with whatever the doctors did to her made her less effected by death. He knew how grueling the visits to the doctors could be from first hand experience, if she was this unaffected by death already he might not be able to get through to her. The fact that he hadn't had a proper conversation in four or so years wasn't helping either.

Maybe he shouldn't have been so sarcastic, she was just a few steps away from a full on mental break down and he just had to be snarky. Maybe if he was more straight forward he could get through to her but he wasn't exactly sure, it was the best that his brain could come up with. Maybe being blunt could also hurt but if he had been more to the point in his explanation then this wouldn't be happening, and for better or for worse this was the best that his starved and sleep deprived brain could come up with. He was acutely aware that she was staring at him in the couple of seconds it took for his train of thought to crash.

He spent a couple more milliseconds thinking of a way to go about it, his brain was refusing to cooperate so he chose to take the punches as they come. "Did you want to do it," Tokiken jolted slightly under his grip, she probably had gotten used to the silence, she carried on to stare at him. "The stuff in the assessment I mean," he got a sight finch and a small tremble but nothing else. If he was being honest he was half certain that he couldn't get through to her, "from your reaction, I would say that's a no," some sarcasm sipped through the cracks, he couldn't just do that, he entire mental state rested on him so he had to control himself.

"So let me ask you, are you a monster?" she carried on to stare at him, her eyes were cold and unforgiving, if he didn't get this right first try then he was fucked, no redoes. But that's okay, he works well under pressure; she looked like she was going to answer but he interrupted her yet again, he knew what she was going to say so there was no point in letting her speak. "The correct answer is no," she stared at him with those same dead eyes, the only change he could see in them was a faint glow of curiosity; he briefly wondered how someone could go from near catatonic crying to a blank face like she did but quickly brushed the irrelevant though out of his mind.

He went back over his plan in his head, all in all it was pretty shit, but with his minimal social skills it was the best he had to offer and if he didn't want her to go catatonic, which he didn't, that had to be enough. "Let me rephrase it again, did you enjoy it," he was pretty sure he new the answer. She looked away from him and turned her head to face the cage directly parallel to hers, he saw her head nod. That wasn't what he was expecting, he looked at her with a brow raised and reevaluated the look in her eyes, they were not the eyes of a deranged killer that was for sure, defiantly depressed but that surprised no one.

"Okay, now tell me why?" it was a simple question on the surface, but if he knew why then he could find a way to down play it. She looked back at him, she was actually putting thought into it which was a good sign at least, it meant she had to strain to find answers. He was half certain that he already knew the answer, it was quite simply biological impulse, if an animal was engaging for a fight for it's life why would it not decide to keel over and die. The human body's response to that is a response that it has to quite a lot of things and it's called dopamine... or was it serotonin.

Normally someone of his age would not know this, but one of the most clear memories he has of his past was of this one on the test the school made him to to determine his IQ, he wasn't sure what it meant. But after that they gave him a lot of books about science and english before asking him if he wanted to move up a couple of years, the idiot he was back then said no because 'he wanted to be a super cool hero like All Might' and UA didn't let people into the hero course unless they are fourteen. That coupled with the fact that he went to the 'Doctors' quite often and they always discussed stuff like that.

She looked conflicted before muttering "because I didn't want to die," that had been the first time he had heard her without a stutter and it would seem that she wasn't as annoying as before. But he read more into her words, 'did't' implies that it was past tense. That was another can of worms entirely, he needed to deal with the problem at hand first, the next few steps were where is plan could fall apart so he needed to be extra careful. He just needed to lead her down a specific train of thought, but if he missed a single que or sign he could bring her in the exact opposite diction then intended.

"Okay, then there is no problem," she looked back at him, she still looked like she wasn't convinced; she just looked more doubtful about what he saying. He needed to justify what he just said in such a way that she would believe him, since when had children been this suspicious, he thought they were meant to be gullible. It makes sense considering her situation but it was really confusing for him to work around, "In a choice between 'you' and 'me', it is natural for people to choose themselves especially if its a stranger their up against," she stated at him.

He wasn't sure what to do, he knew how to rip people limb from limb and blast them to bits but he hadn't had a proper conversation since he was seven. "What I'm trying to say is that what you felt and did is a sign that your normal not the other way around," she stared at him. She placed her head between her knees, he could see subtle tears run down her face. She was staring directly down at the metal of the bottom of her cage, he already noticed that her eyes were red puffy but the tears now turned them a deep crimson as they fell down into the ever growing puddle.

"Your lying," it was barley more than a whisper, but he picked up on it none the less. "No, no I'm not. You reacted to the situation just like anyone else and the fact that you had forewarning of what was going to happen only makes it even more obvious," he saw as the small trail of tear became a stream before becoming a waterfall and making her entire body rack with sobs. He wasn't quite sure if he was doing good but he carried on anyway "your not a monster, no one here is. its just basic common sense,". Snot and tears rolled down her face. He knew that he partly lying, she wasn't a monster, but most of the guards and a vast majority of the 'agents' are.

Seeing her like this, he felt the cold and unfamiliar fire of guilt and pity rush over him, he thought back to when he was in her position. He remembered most of the assignments and some bouts in the arena but nothing much else, he strained himself to think harder and came up with something. He could remember the blood and the tears, maybe after his second try in the arena and he was breaking down much like Tokiken. He remembered the pain of the doctors 'handiwork' and an overbearing need for comfort, he had never got what he wanted but when he looked at Tokiken he knew it was going to be different for her.

He may not be the ideal shoulder to cry on but he was a shoulder none the less, he looked at the two rows of bars the separated him and Tokiken. They were pretty thick, but any determined adult could manage to get through it; he may not be an adult but he did have the augmentations given to him by the doctors. He ripped the bars from the cages with some difficulty, sure he could use his quirk but he liked having a wrist so he wasn't going to consider doing that. Small pieces of metal found their way into his hands yet he did not flinch, sure the guards surly would be alerted of this but it wouldn't be as bad as using his quirk.

He dragged her cage closer until they were next to one and other, the sound the metal of the cage scrapping across the floor made was ear-piercing yet he made sure not to flinch. He and her were next to each other now, it did look like she hadn't noticed there newfound proximity being wholly focused on balling her eyes out; he didn't know what to do, he had never been in this situation before and his lack of know-how made him want to punch something. He tried to remember something, anything, from his time before The Warehouse that would help him, he came up with nothing.

He slowly moved his arm up and around her back and placed a hand on her shoulder, he lightly pulled on her causing her to lean against him. The best he could do for now would becoming a literal shoulder to cry on, he felt her sobbing stop for a moment when she made contact with him only to carry on full force a couple seconds later. He may not be what she wanted to comfort her and to be honest this was way out of his comfort zone yet he couldn't not do and still call himself a human. It was honestly funny that he was trying to stop Tokiken seeing herself the same way that he sees himself.

But it makes sense, he's a monster and she isn't one yet, so he had to protect her from becoming on. Not because of personal attachment or sympathy but out of the same moral obligation that makes people help baby ducklings cross the rode. He lets her cry and scream into his side as he stares straight ahead, he wouldn't admit it to anyone but he hadn't felt this level of guilt over anything he has done for a long time and that was what he wanted to protect inside her. If she is able to survive through this with a moral compass still intact he'll consider it a win.

Well it would be more accurate to say, if she is able to _die_ with a moral compass still intact then he'd consider it a win. There was no surviving The Warehouse only dying older then the rest, infact the oldest of the people he had seen in the cages looked like they had been in their mid to late twenties, new comers always in their early teens so they would have been here for the better part of ten years. He heard the scuffling of running feet to his right, he looked over to see that two guards were both pointing their guns at him. He rapped his free arms over Tokiken to make sure that they wouldn't shoot her, he bared his teeth for added affect.

They stayed like this for a couple of minutes before one guard nudged the other and whispering something into his ear, the receiving guard let out a frustrated sigh before looking over at him, he made sure to snarl when they looked at him. The two guards stared at each other for a while before the asshole guard sighed once more and turned to leave at the same time as he slipped his rifle into his holster, he'd consider it a win. He waited for them to leave before letting his guard, he looked down at Tokiken, who was still crying, with a frown.

He had predicted that it was going to be a particular exhausting gap between arena and assessment, both physically and emotionally, and he had a feeling that he was right.

* * *

**...**

* * *

Hitoshi Shinso slowly sat up in his bed, it was currently one in the morning and he had long since given up on sleep. He slipped his legs over the edge of his bed and got up, he then slowly lumbered over to his laptop that was currently resting on his desk. He flipped the devices lid open causing it to spill light into his bed room making him squint, he then typed in his password and waited for it to load. His farther had let his step-mom choose what computer he got so of course it was the cheapest, and slowest, one there. He reached into his pocket and grabbed his phone, he flicked in his password which got him in instantly, his dad got him his phone.

He scrolled through his apps and opened his shortcut to _"Put Your Hands Up Radio"_, he scrolled through all of the previous recordings and picked one on random. He put in his ear buds and let the loud voice of present mic roll over him, he turned back to his computer and saw that it had finished logging in. He opened google and flicked through his tabs, he clicked on one of his forums and scrolled down looking for something new. This one in particular was of his favourite pro hero, Ereaserhead, its updates were few and far between and even then the quality was usually trash.

He raised a brow when he saw that there were two different updates, he clicked on the first and was greeted with the usual crummy seven second four-forty p video of the heroes binding cloth tying up a thug in a back ally. He wasn't able to get a clear view of the mans face with only two gleaming red eyes shining in the darkness indicating that he was actually there. From what he's saw of the hero he had guessed that his quirk was an erasure type, it wasn't a popular theory with a majority guessing he had a telekinesis type due to his strange capture cloth. But the fact that he was named EREASERhead was kind of a giveaway.

The fact that his enemy's never use their quirks was also a little suspicious. He like to think that he did have an eraser quirk for personal reasons to, the fact that he also had a none physical quirk that could be deemed villainous but still managed to end up as a pro hero comforted him. Everyone in his life, par his dad, told him his quirk was to villainous to be a hero. Nevertheless he exited to the next video which, to his surprise, had audio. It also was around thirty seconds long which was also odd, he paused his recording of Present Mic on pause and plugged his ear buds into his computer.

He pressed on the video expecting yet another back ally scene only to be greeted with the well lit inside of a bank. From the position the camera was in it was clear that there was a villain attack in progress, the camera was facing a giant open hole in the side of the bank that led to the outside world. To his surprise he saw his favourite hero, Ground Zero, out there. He may not be a pro and doing his job against the law but he could safely say that he would place in the top ten in the hero rankings from his work ethic alone; when this was paired with his overall nonchalant attitude he could easily place in the top five.

The vigilante wasn't that well know, he did show up to fight a gigantification villain in broad daylight once but other than that he was harder to trace than Ereaser which was an impressive feat, he had never been able to see what was under his hood. The vigilante was fighting the villain that presumably caused the whole incident with the number two hero _Endeavour _throwing the occasional fire ball to provide support. After they were done the vigilante went to tie up the villain only to flinch back in pain, he then looked down at his palm and frowned. Hitoshi squinted at the picture on screen and saw a vague tint of red on the vigilante's palm. He most have over used his quirk.

He seemed to correct himself and waltzed back over to the main entrance of the bank and slamming the door open._"You can come out, we handled the villain," _from there the camera started to move forward towards Ground Zero with several previously unseen civilians in the peripheral. There was silence for a couple of seconds before their was a blur of black and Ground Zero was sent to the floor. All the civilians stumbled back in surprise with even Endeavour wearing a slightly shocked look on his face, he didn't get to see the assailant as the camera panned along with Ground Zeros descent to the floor.

Once the camera looked back over to the place the vigilante was standing he saw something he didn't expect to see, standing there, with his fist still out and eyes blood red, was Ereaserhead. _"What are you doing,"_ Endeavour bellowed at the underground hero, the hero stood back up straight as the vigilante came to his senses and climbed up to his feet. _"You ever heard of Ground Zero,"_ even through the video he could see the recognition flash through the flame heroes eyes before a malicious grin came over his face, from there every thing went down hill.

The hero swung his arm back as if ready to fire off an attack, doubt filled Hitoshi's mind, surely the number two hero of the entirety of Japan wouldn't fire off a powerful blast around civilians. It seemed like Ground Zero disagreed, he span around in a blind panic as the hero continued his attack, the vigilante pushed and shoved civilians out of the way before coming across a small child. He looked around again to see that the _'Hero'_ had finished the brief preparation for the attack, the vigilante curled up around the child as a giant wave of fire rolled over him.

Hitoshi felt to very distinct emotions over come him, awe and disgust. Awe for the vigilante, he was able to throw at least four civilians out of the way of an on coming attack in about a second before almost sacrificing his life for a random child, _without a second thought._ This was why he admired the vigilante so much, he was more than a hero then a majority of the pros, a great example of someone he was better than was Captain Celebrity. An asshole hero from America that fled to Japan to escape from his suing wife. Sure he saved a bunch of people but that was only when he was on camera. There has been plenty of clips of him waiting for the press at disasters.

Speaking of trash heroes, his respect for the number two went straight down and into the hell. The fact that he attacked a 'villain' with such a dangerous quirk around that many civilians. It made him sick. He watched as the vigilante stumbled back to his feet and turned back to the 'heroes', he could finally see under the mans hood and was greeted with a pearl white half mask that covered everything but his mouth, which at that moment was twisted into a ferocious frown. He could vaguely hear Endeavour monologuing about himself in the background, yet all his attention was on the furious vigilante.

_"Shut the fuck up!"_ he suddenly snaps, there was an blood running the mans back that stains the remains of his hoodie. Any doubt about the mans age was forgotten when hearing how deep the snarl came out as. A surprised looked spread across the underground heroes face as one of disdain came across the number two's. _"To be honest, you didn't surprise me Endeavour, but Ereaser, I expected better of you,"_ there was a sound of familiarity when he talked about the underground hero, maybe Ereaser was assigned his case, that made the most sense.

He then reached out and grabbed the child's hand before dragging him into the crowd to were, presumably, their parents were. He then walked over to the heroes and snarled up at them, _"We're taking this outside,"_ there was a tone of authority in the mans voice that sent a shiver down Hitoshi spine. He stormed past the two heroes who quietly followed after him, the man shoved his hands in his pockets. Normally someone putting their hands in their pockets isn't that note worthy, but the fact that he was going to fight two heroes at once, _with no quirk_, that's when he noticed something.

In the mans pocket, was a slight bulge, it had a certain shape to it. A slight criss cross could be seen through the fabric, the man had a grenade, he wasn't sure what kind but he hoped beyond hope that it was a smoke or flash bomb. He may have a newly growing disdain for heroes but that didn't mean he wished death upon them, the man span on his heel when he reached the middle of the road. The three of them stared at each other before the pin dropped, Endeavour let off another large wave of fire that Ground Zero dodged under before he back peddled away from a stab to the gut, all with his hands still in his pockets.

The fight carried on with him trying to doge with decreasing levels of success, the fight last just over five seconds before he went on the offensive. He flicked what looked like sweat into Erasers eyes before slamming his palm over them, he could see some smoke coming from them as he lurched back. Ground Zero then slammed the grenade to the ground as it, to Hitoshi's relief, exploded into a cloud of smoke. He then saw the smoke light up from, what he assumed was, one of Ground Zero's explosions. Almost directly after that it lit up again as Endeavour perused the fleeing vigilante.

The camera person ran outside to get a better shot, it was hard to tell what was going on thanks to the less then optimum quality. He's could see two specks off in the distance, easily over two-hundred meters away. He briefly wondered how they got up there in only six or so seconds but was snapped out of it by what looked like a trail of fire. Ground Zero was charging at Endeavour, he wondered what plan her had. He couldn't really expect a move like the one that took down the villain to work on the number two and that looked like it was already pretty painful.

He was snapped out of his though by something he wasn't expecting, he flinched back in his chair as his screen lit up. In front of him was a giant explosion, easily over a hundred meters tall and across. Clearly the shear magnitude of the display of power was lost on the quality of the camera, the sound happened seconds after the fact; it was so loud it caused Hitoshi to panic and fall back in his chair. After getting back up he saw that the camera person was falling back just like him, they probably just got hit by the shock wave. He douse appreciate how they tried to keep the camera facing the explosion even after they were thrown of their feet.

He watched as he saw something emerge from the dying inferno, it looked like a large trail of smoke and was comparable to a commit falling into the atmosphere. It was coming closer and closer and he heard the civilian start to break out of their awe and mutter and point until one of them called out, "It's heading for us!" the women the rushed back into the bank, closely followed by the rest of her civilian counter parts. The last one through slammed the door shut behind them as a sickening thud was heard on the other side. After a couple of minuter the camera person made the trek to the outside.

Upon opening the doors, they were greeted with a fiery inferno, several debris had caught on fire around the crash sight. They walked forward and towards the newly made crater. The gazed in, using their camera as a tool to see further in, they were greeted to the bloodied and battered form of Endeavour. Several of his bones pierced through his skin and server burns riddled his torso but most worrying of all was the fact that the entirety of his costumes chest had been burned clean off. Hitoshi swallowed the rising bile in his throat.

_"Someone call an ambula-"_ the camera person called as they cut off the recording. With that Hitoshi was plunged into pure darkness, he stared at the blank screen for a couple of seconds before closing his laptops lid. He then turned off his phone that had been discarded off to the side, he stood from his desk and slunked to his bed and flopped on top of the duvet. He wasn't sure what to think, for one that was one of the coolest things he had ever seen in his entire life, sure All Might could defeat people in a single punch but come on.

For two, he could feel his faith in heroes begin to dwindle, how many heroes were like Endeavour and was okay with having children as collateral damage. He already had an answer and it was to many.


End file.
